F  ROM  TH  E  L I B  RARYOF 


University  of  California  •  Berkeley 


I  '-  /-*  I 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM 


A  STOUT 


BY 


W.  D.  HOWELLS 

AUTHOR  OP  "APRIL  HOPES"  "ANNIE  KILBURN 
"A  HAZARD  OP  NEW  FORTUNES"  ETC. 


NEW  YORK 

HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  FRANKLIN  SQUARE 
1890 


Copyright.  1890,  by  WILLIAM  DEAN  HOWELLS. 


All  rights  reserved. 


Elcctrotyped  by  David  Douglas,  Edinburgh. 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

PART  FIRST.— FAULKNER. 

I. 

DOUGLAS  FAULKNER  was  of  a  type  once  commoner 
in  the  West  than  now,  I  fancy.  In  fact,  many  of 
the  circumstances  that  tended  to  shape  such  a 
character,  with  the  conditions  that  repressed  and 
the  conditions  that  evolved  it,  have  changed  so 
vastly  that  they  may  almost  be  said  not  to  exist  any 
longer. 

He  was  a  lawyer,  with  a  high  ideal  of  professional 
honour,  and  in  his  personal  relations  he  was  known 
to  be  almost  fantastically  delicate,  generous,  and 
faithful.  At  the  same  time  he  was  a  "practical" 
politician;  he  adhered  to  his  party  in  all  its 
measures ;  he  rose  rapidly  to  be  a  leader  in  it,  and 
was  an  unscrupulous  manager  of  caucuses  and  con- 
ventions. For  a  while  he  was  editor  of  the  party 
A 


2  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

organ  in  his  city,  and  he  wrote  caustic  articles  for  it 
which  were  rather  in  the  line  of  his  political  than 
his  personal  morality.  This  employment  was  sup- 
posed to  be  more  congenial  than  his  profession  to 
the  literary  taste  for  which  he  had  a  large  repute 
among  his  more  unliterary  acquaintance.  They 
said  that  Faulkner  could  have  been  an  author  if  he 
had  chosen,  and  they  implied  that  this  was  not 
worth  while  with  a  man  who  could  be  something  in 
law  and  politics.  Their  belief  had  followed  him 
from  Muskingum  University,  where  he  was  graduated 
with  distinction  in  letters  and  forensics.  The  school 
was  not  then  on  so  grand  a  scale  as  its  name,  and  a 
little  of  the  humanities  might  have  gone  n  long  way 
in  it ;  but  Faulkner  was  really  a  lover  of  books,  and 
a  reader  of  them,  whether  he  could  ever  have  been 
a  writer  of  them  or  not ;  and  he  kept  up  his  habit 
of  reading  after  he  entered  active  life. 

It  was  during  his  editorial  phase  that  I  came  from 
the  country  to  be  a  writer  on  the  opposition  news- 
paper in  his  city,  and  something  I  did  caught  his 
fancy  :  some  sketch  of  the  sort  I  was  always  trying 
at,  or  some  pert 'criticism,  or  some  flippant  satire  of 
his  party  friends.  He  came  to  see  me,  and  asked  me 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  3 

to  his  house,  for  a  talk,  he  said,  about  literature ; 
and  when  I  went  I  chose  to  find  him  not  very  modern 
in  his  preferences.  He  wanted  to  talk  to  me  about 
Byron  and  Shelley,  Scott  and  Cooper,  Lamartine 
and  Schiller,  Irving  and  Goldsmith,  when  I  was  full 
of  Tennyson  and  Heine,  Emerson  and  Lowell,  George 
Eliot  and  HaAvthorne  and  Thackeray ;  and  he  rather 
bored  me,  showing  me  fine  editions  of  his  favourites. 
I  was  surprised  to  learn  that  ho  was  only  a  few  years 
older  than  myself :  he  had  filled  my  mind  so  long  as 
a  politician  that  I  had  supposed  him  a  veteran  of 
thirty,  at  least,  and  he  proved  to  be  not  more  than 
twenty-six.  Still,  as  I  was  only  twenty-two  I  paid 
him  the  homage  of  a  younger  man,  but  I  remember 
deciding  that  he  was  something  of  a  sentimentalist. 
He  seemed  anxious  to  account  for  himself  in  his 
public  character,  so  out  of  keeping  with  the  other 
lives  he  led ;  he  said  he  was  sorry  that  his  mother 
(with  whom  he  lived  in  her  widowhood)  was  out  of 
town ;  she  was  the  inspiration  of  all  his  love  of 
literature,  he  said ;  and  would  have  been  so  glad  to 
see  me.  I  was  flattered,  for  the  Faulkners  were  of 
the  first  social  importance ;  they  were  of  Virginian 
extraction.  From  his  library  he  took  me  into  what 


4  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

he  called  his  den,  and  introduced  me  to  a  friend  of 
his  who  sat  smoking  in  a  corner,  and  whom  I  saw 
to  be  a  tall  young  Episcopal  clergyman  when  he 
stood  up.  The  night  was  very  hot ;  Faulkner  had 
in  some  claret  punch,  and  the  Rev.  Mr.  Nevil  drank 
with  us.  He  did  not  talk  much,  and  I  perceived 
that  he  was  the  matter-of-fact  partner  in  a  friendship 
which  was  very  romantic  on  Faulkner's  side,  and 
which  appeared  to  date  back  to  their  college  days. 
That  was  now  a  good  while  ago,  but  they  seemed  to 
be  in  the  habit  of  meeting  often,  and  to  have  kept 
up  their  friendship  in  all  its  first  fervour.  Mr. 
Nevil  was  very  handsome,  with  a  regular  face,  and 
a  bloom  on  it  quite  girlishly  peachy,  and  very  pure, 
still,  earnest  blue  eyes.  He  looked  physically  and 
spiritually  wholesome;  but  Faulkner  certainly  did 
not  look  wholesome  in  the  matter  of  his  complexion 
at  least.  It  was  pale,  with  a  sort  of  smokiness,  and 
his  black,  straight  hair  strung  down  in  points  over 
his  forehead ;  his  beautiful  dark  eyes  were  restlessly 
brilliant;  he  stooped  a  little,  and  he  was,  as  they 
say  in  the  West,  loose-hung.  I  noticed  his  hands, 
long,  nervous,  with  fingers  that  trembled,  as  he 
rested  their  tips,  a  little  yellowed  from  his  cigar,  on 
a  book. 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  5 

It  was  a  volume  of  De  Quincey,  on  whom  we  all 
came  together  in  literature,  and  we  happened  to 
talk  especially  of  his  essay  on  Kant,  and  of  the 
dreams  which  afflicted  the  philosopher's  old  age,  and 
which  no  doubt  De  Quincey  picturesquely  makes 
the  most  of.  Then  we  began  to  tell  our  own 
dreams,  the  ghastlier  ones ;  and  Faulkner  said  he 
sometimes  had  dreams,  humiliating,  disgraceful, 
loathsome,  that  followed  him  far  into  the  next  day 
with  a  sense  of  actual  occurrence.  He  was  very 
vivid  about  them,  and  in  spite  of  the  want  of 
modernity  in  his  literary  preferences,  I  began  to 
think  he  might  really  have  been  a  writer.  He  said 
that  sometimes  he  did  not  see  why  we  should  not 
attribute  such  dreams  to  the  Evil  One,  who  might 
have  easier  access  to  a  man  in  the  helplessness  of 
sleep;  but  Nevil  agreed  with  me  that  they  were 
more  likely  to  come  from  a  late  supper.  Faulkner 
submitted,  but  he  said  they  were  a  real  affliction,  and 
their  persistence  in  a  man's  waking  thoughts  might 
almost  influence  his  life. 

When  I  took  my  leave  he  followed  me  to  his  gate, 
in  his  bare  head  and  slippers ;  it  was  moonlight,  and 
he  walked  a  long  way  homeward  with  me.  We  led 


6  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

a  very  simple  life  in  our  little  city  then,  and  a  man 
might  go  bareheaded  and  slipper-footed  about  its 
streets  at  night  as  much  as  he  liked.  Now  and  then 
we  met  a  policeman,  and  Faulkner  nodded,  with  the 
facile  "Ah,  Tommy  I"  or  "Hello,  Mike  !  "  of  a  man 
inside  politics.  I  told  him  I  envied  him  his  ability 
to  mingle  with  the  people  in  that  way,  and  he  said 
it  was  not  worth  while. 

"  You  are  on  the  right  track,  and  I  hope  you  '11 
stick  to  it.  "We  ought  to  have  some  Western 
authors  ;  the  West 's  ripe  for  it.  I  used  to  have  the 
conceit  to  think  I  could  have  done  something  myself 
in  literature,  if  I  'd  kept  on  after  I  left  college." 

I  murmured  some  civilities  to  the  effect  that  this 
was  what  all  his  friends  thought. 

"  Well,  it  Js  too  late,  naw,"  he  said,  "  if  ever  it  was 
early  enough.  I  was  foredoomed  to  the  law  ;  my 
father  wouldn't  hear  of  anything  else,  and  I  don't 
know  that  I  blame  him.  I  might  have  made  a 
spoon,  but  I  should  certainly  have  spoiled  a  horn. 
A  man  generally  does  what  he  Js  fit  for.  Now  there 's 
Nevil Don't  you  like  Nevil  ? " 

I  said,  "  Very  much,"  though  really  I  had  not 
thought  it  very  seemly  for  a  clergyman  to  smoke, 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  7 

and  drink  claret-punch  :  I  was  very  severe  in  those 
days. 

Faulkner  went  on  :  "  Nevil  's  an  instance,  a  perfect 
case  in  point.  If  ever  there  was  a  human  creature 
born  into  the  world  to  do  just  the  work  he  is  doing, 
it 's  Nevil.  I  can't  tell  you  how  much  that  fellow 
has  been  to  me,  March  ! "  This  was  the  second 
time  we  had  met;  but  Faulkner  was  already  on 
terms  of  comradery  with  me ;  he  was  the  kind  of 
man  who  could  hold  no  middle  course;  he  must 
stand  haughtily  aloof,  or  he  must  take  you  to  his 
heart.  As  he  spoke,  he  put  his  long  arm  across  my 
shoulders,  and  kept  it  there  while  we  walked.  "  I 
was  inclined  to  be  pretty  wild  in  college,  and  I  had 
got  to  running  very  free  when  I  first  stumbled 
against  Jim  Nevil.  He  was  standing  up  as  tall  and 
straight  morally  as  he  does  physically,  but  he 
managed  to  meet  me  on  my  own  level  without 
seeming  to  stoop  to  it.  He  was  ordained  of  God, 
then,  and  his  life  had  a  message  for  every  one ;  for 
me  it  seemed  to  have  a  special  message,  and  what  he 
did  for  me  was  what  he  lived  more  than  what  he 
said.  Ho  talked  to  me,  of  course,  but  it  was  his 
example  that  saved  me.  You  must  know  Nevil. 


8  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

Yes,  he's  a  noble  fellow,  and  you  can't  have  any 
true  conception  of  friendship  till  you  have  known 
him.  Just  see  that  moon  ! "  Faulkner  stopped 
abruptly,  and  threw  up  his  head. 

The  perfect  orb  seemed  to  swim  in  the  perfect 
blue.  The  words  began  to  breathe  themselves  from 
my  lips — 

"  '  The  moon  doth  with  delight 

Look  round  her  when  the  heavens  are  bare    ' " 

and  he  responded  as  if  it  were  the  strain  of  a  litany — 

"  '  Waters  on  a  starry  night 
Are  beautiful  and  fair  ; ' " 

and  I  spoke — 

"  '  The  sunshine  is  a  glorious  birth  ; '  " 

and  he  responded  again — 

"  '  But  yet  I  know,  where'er  I  go, 

That  there  hath  passed  a  glory  from  the  earth.' " 

His  voice  broke  in  the  last  line  and  faded  into  a 
tremulous  whisper.  It  was  the  youth  in  both  of  us, 
smitten  to  ecstasy  by  the  beauty  of  the  scene,  and 
pouring  itself  out  in  the  modulations  of  that  divine 
stop,  as  if  it  had  been  the  rapture  of  one  soul. 

He  took  his  arm  from  my  shoulders,  and  turned 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  9 

about  without  any  ceremony  of  adieu,  and  walked 
away,  head  down,  with  shuffling,  slippered  feet. 

We  met  several  times,  very  pleasantly,  and  with 
increased  liking.  Then  he  took  offence,  as  capri- 
cious as  his  former  fancy,  at  something  I  wrote,  and 
sent  me  an  angry  note,  which  I  answered  in  kind. 
Not  long  afterward  I  went  abroad  on  a  little  money 
I  had  saved  up,  and  when  I  came  home,  I  married, 
and  by  an  ironical  chance  found  myself,  with  my 
sesthetic  tastes,  my  literary  ambition,  and  my  jour- 
nalistic experience,  settled  in  the  insurance  business 
at  Boston.  I  did  not  revisit  the  "West,  but  I  learned 
by  letters  that  our  dear  little  city  out  there  had 
become  a  formidable  railroad  centre ;  everybody  had 
made  or  lost  money,  and  Faulkner  had  become  very 
rich  through  the  real  estate  which  had  long  kept  him 
land-poor.  One  day  I  got  a  newspaper  addressed 
in  his  handwriting,  which  brought  me  the  news  of 
his  marriage.  The  name  of  the  lady  struck  me  as 
almost  factitiously  pretty,  and  I  could  well  imagine 
Faulkner  provisionally  falling  in  love  with  her 
because  she  was  called  Hermia  Winter.  The  half- 
column  account  of  the  wedding  described  the  Rev. 
James  Nevil  as  "  officiating  " ;  and  something  in  the 


10  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

noisy  and  bragging  tone  of  the  reporter  in  dealing 
with  this  important  society  event  disadvantaged  the 
people  concerned  in  my  mind.  I  chose  to  regard  it 
all  as  cruder  and  louder  than  anything  I  remembered 
of  the  place  in  old  days ;  but  my  wife  said  that  it  was 
characteristically  Western,  and  that  probably  it  had 
always  been  like  that  out  there  ;  only  I  had  not  felt  it 
while  I  was  in  it,  though,  as  she  said,  I  was  not  of  it. 
She  was  a  Bostonian  herself,  and  it  was  useless  to 
appeal  to  the  society  journalism  of  her  own  city  in 
proof  of  the  prevalence  of  that  sort  of  vulgarity 
everywhere.  She  laughed  at  the  name  Hermia,  and 
said  it  sounded  made-up,  and  that  she  had  no  doubt 
the  girl's  name  was  Hannah.  I  thought  I  had  my 
revenge  afterward  when  a  friend  wrote  me  about  the 
marriage,  which  was  a  surprise  to  everybody ;  for  it 
had  always  been  supposed  that  Faulkner  was  going 
to  marry  the  beautiful  and  brilliant  Miss  Ludlow, 
long,  perhaps  too  long,  the  belle  of  the  place.  The 
lady  whom  he  had  chosen  was  the  daughter  of  a 
New  England  family,  who  had  lived  just  out  of  town 
in  my  time  and  had  never  been  in  society.  She  was 
a  teacher  in  Bell's  Institute,  and  Faulkner  met  her 
there  on  one  of  his  business  visits  as  trustee.  She 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  11 

was  a  very  cultivated  girl,  though ;  and  they  were 
going  abroad  for  their  wedding  journey.  My  corre- 
spondent had  a  special  message  from  Faulkner  for 
me,  delivered  on  his  wedding  night.  He  remem- 
bered me  among  the  people  he  would  have  liked  to 
have  there ;  he  was  sorry  for  our  little  quarrel, 
and  was  to  blame  for  it ;  he  was  coming  home  by 
way  of  Boston,  and  was  going  to  look  me  up. 

My  wife  said,  Well,  he  seemed  a  nice  fellow ;  but 
it  only  showed  how  any  sort  of  New  England  girl 
could  go  out  there  and  pick  up  the  best.  For  the 
rest,  she  hoped  they  would  not  hurry  home  on  my 
account ;  and  if  all  my  Western  friends,  with  their 
free  ideas  of  hospitality,  were  going  to  call  on  me, 
there  would  be  no  end  to  it.  It  was  the  jealousy  of 
her  husband's  past  every  good  wife  feels  that  spoke ; 
but  long  before  I  met  Faulkner  again  wo  had  both 
forgotten  all  about  him. 


II. 


ONE  day  seven  or  eight  years  later,  when  I  was 
coming  up  from  Lynn,  where  we  had  board  for  a 
few  weeks'  outing  in  August,  I  fell  in  with  Dr. 
Wingate,  the  nervous  specialist.  We  were  members 
of  the  same  dining  club,  and  were  supposed  to  meet 
every  month ;  we  really  met  once  or  twice  during 
the  winter,  but  then  it  was  a  great  pleasure  to  me, 
and  I  tried  always  to  get  a  place  next  him  at  table. 
I  found  in  him,  as  I  think  one  finds  in  most  intelli- 
gent physicians,  a  sympathy  for  human  suffering 
unclouded  by  sentiment,  and  a  knowledge  of  human 
nature  at  once  vast  and  accurate,  which  fascinated 
me  far  more  than  any  forays  of  the  imagination  in 
that  difficult  region.  Like  physicians  everywhere, 
he  was  less  local  in  his  feelings  and  interests  than 
men  of  other  professions ;  and  I  was  able  better  to 
overcome  with  him  that  sense  of  being  a  foreigner, 
and  in  some  sort  on  sufferance,  which  embarrassed 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  13 

me  (quite  needlessly,  I  dare  say)  with  some  of  my 
commensals :  lawyers,  ministers,  brokers,  and  poli- 
ticians. I  had  a  sort  of  affection  for  him ;  I  never 
saw  him,  with  the  sunny,  simple-hearted,  boyish 
smile  he  had,  without  feeling  glad ;  and  it  seemed  to 
me  that  he  liked  me,  too.  His  kindly  presence 
must  have  gone  a  long  way  with  his  patients, 
whose  fluttering  sensibilities  would  hang  upon  his 
cheery  strength  as  upon  one  of  the  main  chances 
of  life. 

We  rather  rushed  together  to  shake  hands,  and 
each  asked  how  the  other  happened  to  be  there  at 
that  hour  in  the  morning.  I  explained  my  presence, 
and  he  said,  as  if  it  were  some  sort  of  coincidence  : 
"  You  don't  say  so  !  Why,  I've  got  a  patient  over 
at  Swampscott,  who  says  he  knows  yon.  A  man 
named  Faulkner." 

I  repeated,  "  Faulkner  ? "  In  the  course  of  travel 
and  business  I  had  met  so  many  people  that  I  for- 
gave myself  for  not  distinguishing  them  very  sharply 
by  name,  at  once. 

"He  says  he  used  to  know  you  in  your  demi- 
semi-literary  days,  and  he  rather  seemed  to  think 
you  must  be  concealing  a  reputation  for  a  poet,  when 


14  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

I  told  him  you  were  in  the  insurance  business,  and  I 
only  knew  of  your  literary  tastes.  He  'a  a  Western 
man,  and  he  met  you  out  there." 

"  Oh  ! "  said  I.  "  Douglas  Faulkner  !  "  And  now 
it  was  my  turn  to  say,  "  You  don't  say  so  !  Why  of 
course  !  Is  it  possible  ! "  and  I  lost  myself  in  a 
cloud  of  silent  reminiscences  and  associations,  to 
come  out  presently  with  the  question,  "What  in  the 
world  is  he  doing  at  Swampscott  ? " 

The  doctor  looked  serious ;  and  then  he  looked 
keenly  at  me.  "  Were  you  and  he  great  friends  ?  " 

"  Well,  we  were  not  sworn  brothers  exactly.  We 
were  writers  on  rival  newspapers ;  but  I  rather  liked 
him.  Yes,  there  was  something  charming  to  me 
about  him;  something  good  and  sweet.  I  haven't 
met  him,  though,  for  ten  years." 

"  He  seemed  to  bo  rather  fond  of  you.  He  said 
he  wished  I  would  tell  you  to  come  and  see  him,  the 
next  time  I  met  you.  Odd  you  should  turn  up 
there  in  the  station  ! "  By  this  time  we  were  in  the 
train,  on  our  way  to  Boston. 

"  I  will,"  I  said,  and  I  hesitated  to  add,  "  I  hope 
there 's  nothing  serious  the  matter  ? " 

The  doctor  hesitated  too.  "Well,  he's  a  pretty 
sick  man.  There 's  no  reason  I  shouldn't  tell  you. 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  15 

He's  badly  run  down;  and — I  don't  like  the  way 
his  heart  behaves." 

"  Oh,  I  'm  sorry " 

"  He  had  just  got  home  from  Europe,  and  was  on 
his  way  to  the  mountains  when  he  came  to  see  me 
in  Boston,  and  I  sent  him  to  the  seaside.  I  came 
down  last  night — it 's  the  beginning  of  my  vacation 
—to  see  him,  and  spent  the  night  there.  He 's  got 
the  Mallows  place — nice  old  place.  Do  you  know 
his  wife  1 " 

"  No ;  he  married  after  I  came  East.  What  sort 
of  person  is  she  ?  "  I  asked. 

I  remembered  my  talk  with  my  wife  about  her 
and  her  name,  and  I  felt  that  it  was  really  a  triumph 
for  me  when  the  doctor  said :  "  Well,  she  ;s  an 
exquisite  creature.  One  of  the  most  beautiful 
women  I  ever  saw,  and  one  of  the  most  interesting. 
Of  course,  there's  where  the  ache  comes  in.  In  a 
case  like  that,  it  isn't  so  much  that  one  dies  as  that 
the  other  lives.  It 's  none  of  my  business  ;  but  she 
seemed  rather  lonely.  They  have  no  acquaintance 
among  the  other  cottagers,  and — did  you  think  of 
taking  your  wife  over  ?  Excuse  me  ! " 

"  Why,  of  course  !  I'm  so  glad  you  suggested  it. 
Mrs.  March  will  be  most  happy  to  go  with  me." 


III. 


MRS.  MARCH  dissembled  her  joy  at  the  prospect 
when  I  opened  it  to  her.  She  said  she  did  not  see 
how  she  entered  into  the  affair.  Faulkner  was  an 
old  friend  of  mine ;  but  she  had  nothing  to  do  with 
him,  and  certainly  nothing  to  do  with  his  wife. 
They  would  not  like  each  other;  it  would  look 
patronising;  it  would  complicate  matters;  she  did 
not  see  what  good  it  would  do  for  her  to  go.  I 
constantly  fell  back  upon  the  doctor's  suggestion. 
In  the  end,  she  went.  She  professed  to  be  governed 
entirely  by  Dr.  Wingate's  opinion  of  our  duty  in  the 
case ;  I  acknowledged  a  good  deal  of  curiosity  as 
well  as  some  humanity,  and  I  boldly  proposed  to 
gratify  both.  But  in  fact  I  felt  rather  ashamed  of 
my  motives  when  I  met  Faulkner,  and  I  righted 
myself  in  my  own  regard  by  instantly  shifting  my 
visit  to  the  ground  of  friendly  civility.  He  seemed 
surprised  and  touched  to  see  me,  and  he  welcomed 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  1 7 

my  wife  with  that  rather  decorative  politeness  which 
men  of  Southern  extraction  use  toward  women.  He 
was  not  going  to  have  any  of  my  compassion  as  an 
invalid,  that  was  clear;  and  he  put  himself  on  a 
level  with  me  in  the  matter  of  .health  at  once.  He 
said  it  was  very  good  of  Dr.  Wingate  to  send  me  so 
soon,  and  I  was  very  good  to  come ;  he  was  rather 
expecting  the  doctor  himself  in  the  afternoon ;  he 
had  been  out  of  kilter  for  two  or  three  years ;  but 
he  was  getting  all  right  now.  I  knew  he  did  not 
believe  this,  but  I  made  believe  not  to  know  it,  and 
I  even  said,  when  he  asked  me  how  I  was,  that  I 
was  so-so ;  and  I  left  him  to  infer  that  everybody 
was  out  of  kilter,  and  perhaps  just  in  his  own  way. 

"  Well,  let  us  go  up  to  the  house,"  he  said,  as  if 
this  gave  him  a  pleasure,  "  and  find  Mrs.  Faulkner. 
You  never  met  my  wife,  March  1  Her  people  used 
to  live  just  outside  the  city  line,  on  Pawpaw  Creek. 
They  were  of  New  England  origin,"  he  added  to  my 
wife;  "but  I  don't  know  whether  you'll  find  her 
very  much  of  a  Yankee.  She  has  passed  most  of 
her  life  in  the  West.  She  will  be  very  glad  to  see 
you ;  we  have  no  acquaintances  about  here.  Your 
Eastern  people  don't  catch  on  to  the  homeless 
B 


18  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

stranger  quite  so  quickly  as  we  do  in  the  West.  I 
dare  say  they  don't  let  go  so  easily,  either." 

We  had  found  Faulkner  at  the  gate  of  his  avenue, 
and  we  began  to  walk  with  him  at  once  toward  his 
cottage,  under  the  arches  of  the  sea-beaten,  somewhat 
wizened  elms,  which  all  slanted  landward,  with  a 
writhing  fling  of  their  grey  and  yellow  lichened 
boughs.  It  was  a  delicious  morning,  and  the  cool 
sunshine  dripped  in  through  the  thin  leaves,  here 
and  there  blighted  at  the  edge  and  faded,  and  seemed 
to  lie  in  pools  in  the  road.  The  fine  air  was  fresh, 
and  brought  from  a  distance  apparently  greater  than 
it  really  came  the  plunge  of  the  surf  against  the 
rocks,  and  the  crash  of  the  rollers  along  the  beach. 
The  ground  fell  away  in  a  wide  stretch  of  neglected 
lawn  toward  the  water ;  and  the  autumnal  dandelions 
lifted  their  stars  on  their  tall  slender  stems  from  the 
long  grass,  which  was  full  of  late  summer  glint  and 
sheen,  and  blowing  with  a  delicate  sway  and  tilt  of 
its  blades  in  the  breeze  that  tossed  the  elms. 

"  What  a  lovely  place  ! "  sighed  my  wife. 

"You  haven't  begun  to  see  it,"  said  Faulkner. 
"  We  've  got  twenty  acres  of  land  here,  and  all  the 
sea  and  sky  there  are.  Mrs.  Faulkner  will  want  to 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  19 

show  you  the  whole  affair.  Did  you  walk  up  from  the 
station1?  Ill  send  for  your  baggage  from  the  house." 

"  That  won't  be  necessary ;  I  have  it  on  my 
arm,"  said  my  wife,  tind  she  put  her  little  shopping 
bag  in  evidence  with  a  gay  twirl. 

"  Why,  but  you  're  going  to  stay  all  night  1 " 

"  Oh  no,  indeed !  What  would  become  of  our 
children  1 " 

"  We  '11  send  to  Lynn  for  them." 

"  Thank  you ;  it  couldn't  be  managed.  I  won't 
try  to  convince  you,  Mr.  Faulkner,  but  I'm  sure 
your  wife  will  be  reasonable,"  she  said,  to  forestall 
the  protests  which  she  saw  hovering  in  his  eyes. 

I  noticed  that  his  eyes,  once  so  beautiful,  had  a 
dull  and  suffering  look,  and  the  smokiness  of  his 
complexion  had  a  kind  of  livid  stain  in  it.  His 
hair  straggled  from  under  his  soft  felt  hat  with  the 
unkempt  effect  I  remembered,  and  his  dress  had  a 
sort  of  characteristic  slovenliness.  He  carried  a 
stick,  and  his  expressive  hands  seemed  longer  and 
languider,  as  if  relaxed  from  a  nervous  tension 
borne  beyond  the  strength. 

"Well,  I'm  sorry,"  said  Faulkner.  "But  you're 
booked  for  the  day,  anyway." 


20  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

My  wife  apparently  did  not  think  it  worth  while 
to  dispute  this ;  or  perhaps  she  was  waiting  to  have 
it  out  with  Mrs.  Faulkner.  He  put  up  his  arm 
across  my  shoulders,  and  gave  me  a  little  pull  toward 
him.  "  It  's  mighty  pleasant  to  see  you  again,  old 
fellow  !  I  can't  tell  you  how  pleasant." 

I  was  not  to  be  outdone  in  civilities,  and  my 
cordiality  in  reply  retrospectively  established  our 
former  acquaintance  on  a  ground  of  intimacy  which 
it  had  never  really  occupied.  My  wife  knew  this 
and  gave  me  a  look  of  surprise,  which  I  could  see 
hardening  into  the  resolution  not  to  betray  herself,  at 
least,  into  insincerities. 

"You'll  find  another  old  acquaintance  of  yours 
here,"  Faulkner  went  on.  "  You  remember  Nevil  1 " 

"  Your  clerical  friend  1  Yes,  indeed  !  Is  he  here  ?" 
I  put  as  much  factitious  rapture  into  my  tone  as  it 
would  hold. 

"Yes;  we  were  in  Europe  together,  and  he's 
spending  a  month  with  us  here."  Faulkner  spoke 
gloomily,  almost  sullenly ;  he  added  brightly,  "  You 
know  I  can't  get  along  without  Jim.  He  was  in 
Europe  with  us,  too,  a  good  deal  of  the  time.  Yes, 
we  've  always  been  great  friends." 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  21 

"  You  remember  I  told  you  about  Mr.  Nevil,  my 
dear,"  I  explained  to  my  wife. 

"  Oh,  yes,"  she  said  non-committally. 

Faulkner  slipped  his  hand  from  my  shoulder  into 
my  arm,  and  gently  stayed  my  pace  a  little.  I 
perceived  that  he  was  leaning  on  me ;  but  I  made 
a  feint  of  our  being  merely  affectionate,  and  slowed 
my  step  as  unconsciously  as  I  could.  He  looked  up 
under  the  downward  slanted  brim  of  his  hat.  "I 
expected  them  before  this.  Nevil  went  up  to  the 
house  for  my  wife,  and  then  we  were  going  down  on 
the  rocks." 

He  stopped  short,  and  rested  heavily  against  me. 
I  glanced  round  at  his  face  :  it  was  a  lurid  red,  and, 
as  it  were,  suffused  with  pain  :  his  eyes  seemed  to 
stand  full  of  tears ;  his  lips  were  purple,  and  they 
quivered. 

It  was  an  odious  moment :  we  could  not  speak  or 
stir ;  we  suffered  too,  and  were  cruelly  embarrassed, 
for  we  felt  that  we  must  not  explicitly  recognise  his 
seizure.  In  front  of  us  I  saw  a  gentleman  and  lady 
who  seemed  to  be  under  something  of  our  constraint. 
They  were  coming  as  swiftly  as  possible,  without 
seeming  to  hurry,  and  they  must  have  understood 


22  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

the  situation,  though  they  could  not  see  his  features. 
Before  they  reached  us,  Faulkner's  face  relaxed,  and 
began  to  recover  its  natural  colour.  He  stirred,  and 
I  felt  him  urging  me  softly  forward.  By  the  time 
we  encountered  the  others,  he  was  able  to  say,  in 
very  much  his  usual  tone,  "My  dear,  this  is  Mrs. 
March,  and  my  old  friend  March,  that  I  Ve  told  you 
about.  Nevil,  you  remember  March  ?  Let  me 
present  you  to  Mrs.  March." 

My  astonishment  that  he  could  accomplish  these 
introductions  was  lost  in  the  interest  that  Mrs. 
Faulkner  at  once  inspired  in  my  wife,  as  I  could  see, 
equally  with  myself.  She  must  then  have  been 
about  thirty,  and  she  had  lost  her  girlish  slenderness 
without  having  lost  her  girlish  grace.  Her  figure, 
tall  much  above  the  wont  of  women,  had  a  mature 
stateliness,  while  fitful  gleams  of  her  first  youth  bright- 
ened her  face,  her  voice,  her  manner.  There  could  be 
no  doubt  about  her  refinement,  and  none  about  her 
beauty ;  the  one  was  as  evident  as  the  other.  The 
beauty  was  of  a  usual  American  type  ;  the  refinement 
was  from  her  eyes,  which  were  angelic ;  deep  and 
faithful  and  touching.  I  am  sure  this  was  the  first 
impression  of  my  wife  as  well  as  myself. 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  23 

I  shook  hands  with  Nevil,  whom  I  found  looking 
not  so  much  older  as  the  past  ten  years  should  have 
made  him.  His  dark  golden  hair  had  retreated  a 
little  on  his  forehead,  and  there  were  some  faint, 
faint  lines  down  his  cheeks  and  his  shaven  lips.  I 
saw  the  look  of  anxiety  he  cast  furtively  at  Faulkner ; 
but  for  that  he  seemed  as  young  and  high-hearted 
as  when  we  first  met.  I  searched  his  eyes  for  the 
clear  goodness  which  once  dwelt  in  them,  and  found 
it,  a  little  saddened,  a  little  sobered,  a  little  more 
saintly,  but  all  there,  still.  I  cannot  tell  how  my 
heart  went  out  to  him  with  a  tenderness  which 
nothing  in  his  behaviour  toward  me  had  ever  invited. 
On  the  few  occasions  when  we  met,  he  had  always 
loyally  left  me  to  Faulkner,  who  made  all  the 
advances  and  offered  all  the  caresses,  without  win- 
ning any  such  return  of  affection  from  me  as  I  now 
involuntarily  felt  for  Nevil.  Of  course  I  looked  at 
my  wife  to  see  what  she  thought  of  him.  I  saw  that 
something  in  her  being  a  woman,  which  drew  her  to 
Mrs.  Faulkner,  left  her  indifferent  to  Nevil. 


IV. 


"HERMIA,"  said  Faulkner,  sounding  the  canine 
letter  in  her  name  with  a  Western  strength  that  was 
full  of  the  charm  of  old  associations  for  me,  "  these 
people  have  got  some  children  at  Lynn,  and  they 
can't  stay  here  overnight  because  they  didn't  bring 
them.  I'm  going  to  send  over  for  them." 

"Oh,  I  should  like  to  See  your  children,"  she 
answered  to  my  wife  cordially,  yet  submissively,  as 
the  way  of  one  wise  woman  is  with  another  concern- 
ing her  children. 

Mrs.  March  explained  how  it  was  in  no  wise 
possible  to  have  the  children  sent  for ;  and  how  we 
had  only  come  for  a  short  call.  I  perceived  that  all 
Mrs.  Faulkner's  politeness  could  not  keep  her  mind 
on  what  my  wife  was  saying :  that  she  was  scanning 
her  husband's  face  with  devoted  intensity.  The 
same  absence  showed  itself  in  Nevil's  manner.  Of 
course  they  were  both  terribly  anxious;  I  could 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  25 

understand  that  from  what  I  had  already  seen  of 
Faulkner's  case ;  and  in  his  interest  they  were  both 
trying  to  hide  their  anxiety.  Of  course,  too,  he 
knew  it  on  Ins  part,  and  he  tried  to  ignore  their 
efforts  at  concealment.  We  were  all  playing  at  the 
futile  and  heart-breaking  comedy  which  humanity 
obliges  us  to  keep  up  with  a  dying  man,  and  in 
which  he  must  bear  his  part  with  the  rest.  We 
began  to  be  even  gay.  Faulkner  insisted  again  that 
we  were  good  for  the  whole  day ;  his  wife  joined 
him ;  he  appealed  to  Nevil  to  put  it  to  Mrs.  March 
as  a  duty  (that  would  fetch  any  New  England 
woman,  he  said),  and  we  consented  to  stay  over 
lunch,  in  a  burlesque  of  being  kept  prisoners.  While 
this  went  on,  I  could  not  help  noticing  the  quality 
of  the  look  which  Faulkner  turned  upon  his  wife  and 
Nevil  when  he  spoke  to  either :  a  sort  of  deadliness 
passing  into  a  piteous  appeal.  It  was  very  curious. 

He  asked  if  we  should  go  down  on  the  rocks,  or 
up  to  the  house,  and  we  decided  that  we  had  better 
go  to  the  house,  and  do  the  rocks  after  lunch :  the 
tide  was  coming  in,  and  the  surf  would  be  better 
and  better. 

"  All  right,"  he  said,  and  we  let  Mr.  Nevil  lead  the 


26  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

way  with  the  ladies,  while  we  came  at  a  little  dis- 
tance behind.  Faulkner  began  at  once  to  praise 
Nevil,  for  his  goodness  in  staying  on  with  him  so 
long  after  he  had  given  up  to  him  the  whole  past 
year  in  Europe.  I  said  the  proper  things  in  appre- 
ciation, and  Faulkner  went  on  to  say  that  Nevil  had 
the  richest  and  the  poorest  parish  in  our  old  home 
now,  the  most  millionaires  and  the  most  paupers; 
and  he  had  made  St.  Luke's  a  refuge  and  a  sanctuary 
for  them  all.  He  said  he  did  not  suppose  a  man 
had  ever  been  so  fortunate  as  he  was  in  his  friend- 
ship with  Nevil.  At  first  his  wife  had  been  jealous 
of  it,  but  now  she  had  got  used  to  it ;  and  though  he 
did  not  suppose  she  would  ever  quite  forgive  Nevil 
for  having  been  his  friend  before  her  time,  she 
tolerated  him.  I  said  I  understood  how  that  sort  of 
thing  was ;  and  he  added  that  there  was  also  the 
religious  difference :  Mrs.  Faulkner's  people  were 
Unitarians,  and  she  was  strenuous  in  their  faith, 
where  he  never  allowed  her  to  be  molested.  We  got 
to  talking  about  the  old  times  in  the  West,  and  the 
people  whom  we  had  known  in  common,  and  how 
the  city  had  grown,  and  how  I  would  hardly  know 
where  I  was  if  I  were  dropped  down  in  it.  But  he 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  27 

kept  returning  to  Nevil  and  to  his  wife,  and  I  became 
rather  tired  of  them. 

The  cottage,  when  we  reached  it,  afforded  a  relief 
by  its  extremely  remarkable  prettiness.  Though  it 
was  so  near  the  sea,  it  was  almost  hidden  in  trees, 
and  as  Faulkner  said,  if  you  did  not  purposely  look 
out  to  the  water,  you  could  easily  imagine  yourself 
in  the  depths  of  the  country.  As  we  sat  on  the 
veranda  that  shaded  three  sides  of  the  house,  he 
named  the  different  points  on  the  coast,  with  the 
curious  accuracy  which  some  people  like  to  achieve 
in  particulars  wholly  unimportant  to  other  people. 
I  suppose  he  had  amused  the  sad  leisure  of  his  sick- 
ness in  verifying  the  geography,  and  I  tried  to  be  in- 
terested in  it,  though  I  was  so  much  more  interested 
in  him.  He  sat  deeply  sunken  in  a  low  Japanese 
arm-chair  of  rushes,  with  his  long  lean  legs  one 
crossed  on  the  other,  and  fondling  the  crook  of  his 
stick  with  his  thin  right  hand,  while  he  looked  out 
to  seaward  under  the  brim  of  his  hat  pulled  down  to 
his  eyes.  Nevil  went  directly  to  his  room  when  we 
reached  the  cottage,  and  after  a  little  while  Mrs. 
Faulkner  took  my  wife  away  to  show  her  the  house, 
which  was  vast  and  extravagantly  furnished  for  a 


28  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

summer  cottage.  "  It  had  gone  unlet  until  very  late 
in  the  season,"  Faulkner  said,  "  and  you  've  no  idea 
how  cheap  we  got  it.  I  suppose  it 's  a  little  out  of 
society,  off  here  on  this  point;  you  see  it 's  quite  alone; 
but  as  we  're  out  of  society,  too,  it  just  suits  us." 

He  looked  after  his  wife  as  she  left  the  veranda 
with  Mrs.  March,  and  I  fancied  in  his  glance  at  her 
buoyant,  strenuous  grace  and  her  beauty  of  perfect 
health,  something  of  the  despair  with  which  a  sick 
man  must  feel  the  whole  world  slipping  from  his 
hold,  too  weak  to  close  upon  the  most  precious 
possession,  and  keep  it  for  his  helplessness  even 
while  he  stays. 

The  ladies  were  gone  a  good  while,  and  he  rambled 
on  incessantly  as  if  to  keep  me  from  thinking  about 
his  condition;  or  at  least  I  fancied  this  because  I 
could  not  help  thinking  of  it.  Just  as  they  returned, 
he  was  asking  me,  "Do  you  remember  our  talking 

that  night  about  Kant's  dreams,  and "  He 

stopped,  and  called  out  to  my  wife,  "  Well,  don't  you 
think  we  are  in  luck  ? " 

"  Luck  doesn't  express  it,  Mr.  Faulkner.  You  're 
in  clover,  knee-deep.  I  didn't  imagine  there  was 
such  a  place,  anywhere." 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  29 

"After  lunch  we  must  show  you  our  old  garden, 
as  well  as  the  rocks,"  said  Faulkner.  "At  present 
I  don't  see  how  we  could  do  better  than  stay  where 
we  are." 

I  thought  he  was  going  to  recur  to  the  subject  he 
had  dropped  at  sight  of  the  returning  ladies,  but  he 
did  not.  He  asked  my  wife  if  Mrs.  Faulkner  had 
shown  her  the  copy  they  had  made  of  Murillo's 
Madonna,  and  he  talked  about  its  qualities  with  an 
authoritative  ignorance  of  art  which  I  should  have 
found  amusing  in  different  circumstances.  He  had 
made  a  complete  collection  of  all  the  engravings  of 
this  Madonna,  and  of  all  the  sentimental  Madonnas 
of  the  Parmesan  school.  He  considered  them  very 
spiritual,  and  said  he  would  show  them  to  us,  some- 
time ;  he  always  carried  them  about  with  him ;  but 
he  wanted  to  keep  something  to  tempt  us  back 
another  day.  He  asked  her  if  she  cared  for  rare 
editions,  and  said  he  wished  he  had  his  large  paper 
copies  with  him.  He  told  her  I  would  remember 
them,  and  I  pretended  that  I  did.  I  do  not  think 
Faulkner  had  read  much  since  I  saw  him.  He 
talked  about  Bulwer  and  Dickens,  and  Cherbuliez 
and  Octave  Feuillet  as  if  they  were  modern.  But 


30  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

nobody  came  up  to  Victor  Hugo.  Of  course  we  had 
both  read  Les  Miserables  1  Mrs.  Faulkner,  he  said, 
was  crazy  about  a  Russian  fellow :  Tourgue"nief. 
Had  we  read  him,  and  could  we  make  anything  out 
of  him  1  Faulkner  could  not,  for  his  part.  Were 
we  ever  going  to  have  any  great  poets  again  1  Byron 
was  the  last  that  you  could  really  call  great. 

His  wife  listened  in  a  watchful  abeyance  to  see  if 
he  needed  anything,  or  felt  worse,  or  was  getting 
tired.  From  time  to  time  he  sent  her  for  some  book, 
or  print,  or  curio  that  he  mentioned,  and  whenever 
she  came  back,  he  gave  her  first  that  deadly  look. 
Afterward,  I  fancied  that  he  despatched  her  on  these 
errands  to  make  experiment  of  how  the  sight  of  her 
would  affect  him.  at  each  return. 

The  sea  stretched  a  vast  shimmer  of  thin  greyish 
blue  under  the  perfect  sky;  and  the  ships  moved 
half  sunk  on  its  rim,  or  seemed  buoyantly  lifting 
from  it  for  flight  in  the  nearer  distance.  The 
colours  were  those  of  an  aquarelle,  washes  of  this 
tint  and  that,  bodyless  and  impalpable,  and  they 
were  attenuated  to  the  last  thinness  in  the 
long  yellow  curve  of  beach,  and  the  break  of  the 
shallow  rollers  upon  it.  Faulkner  said  they  never 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  31 

got  tired  of  looking;  there  was  one  effect  on  the 
wide  wet  beach,  which  he  wished  we  could  see, 
when  people  were  riding  toward  you,  and  seemed 
to  be  walking  on  some  kind  of  extraordinary 
stilts. 

Mr.  Nevil  came  down,  and  then  Mrs.  Faulkner 
said  it  must  be  near  lunch-time,  and  asked  my  wife 
and  me  if  we  would  not  like  to  go  to  our  room 
first. 


V. 


As  soon  as  the  door  closed  upon  us,  my  wife  broke 
out :  "  Welly  my  dear  !  it 's  just  as  I  imagined.  AVhat 
a  tiresome  creature  !  And  how  ignorant  and  arro- 
gant 1  Is  that  what  you  call  a  cultivated  person  in 
the  West  ?" 

"Well,  I  don't  think  I  shall  quite  hold  myself 
responsible  for  Faulkner;  I'll  own  he  hasn't  im- 
proved since  I  saw  him  last.  But  I  always  told  you 
he  was  a  sentimentalist." 

"  Sentimentalist !  He  's  one  sop  of  sentiment ;  and 
as  conventional !  Second-rate  and  second-hand ! 
Why,  my  dear  \  Could  you  ever  have  thought  there 
was  anything  to  that  man  1 " 

"  Well,  certainly  more  than  I  do  at  present.  But 
I  don't  recollect  that  I  ever  boasted  him  Apollo  and 
the  nine  Muses  all  boiled  down  into  one." 

She  did  not  relent.  "  Why,  compared  with  him, 
that  Mr.  Nevil  is  a  burning  and  a  shining  light." 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  33 

"  Nevil  has  certainly  gathered  brilliancy  somehow," 
I  admitted. 

"  It 's  quite  like  such  a  man  as  Faulkner  to  want 
a  three-cornered  household.  I  think  the  man  who 
can't  give  up  his  intimate  friends  after  he 's  married, 
is  always  a  kind  of  weakling.  He  has  no  right  to 
them ;  it 's  a  tacit  reflection  on  his  wife's  heart  and 
mind." 

"  Yes,  I  think  you  're  quite  right  there,"  I  said, 
waiting  for  her  to  put  the  restorative  touches  to  the 
bang  which  the  sea-breeze  had  made  a  little  too  limp 
for  social  purposes ;  and  we  went  over  together  the 
list  of  households  we  knew  in  which  the  husband 
supplemented  himself  with  a  familiar  friend.  We 
agreed  that  it  was  the  innocence  of  our  life  that 
made  it  so  common,  but  we  said  all  the  same  that  it 
was  undignified  and  silly  and  mischievous.  It  kept 
the  husband  and  wife  apart,  and  kept  them  from  the 
absolutely  free  exchange  of  tendernesses  at  any  and 
every  moment,  and  forbade  them  the  equally  whole- 
some immediate  expression  of  resentments,  or  else 
gave  their  quarrels  a  witness  whom  they  could  not 
look  at  without  remembering  that  they  had  quarrelled 
in  his  presence.  We  made  allowance  for  the  differ- 
c 


34  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

ence  in  the  case  of  Nevil  and  the  Faulkners ;  there 
was  now  at  least  a  real  reason  for  his  being  with 
them ;  they  would  have  been  singularly  lonely  and 
helpless  without  him. 

"  They  have  no  children  ! "  said  my  wife.  "  That 
says  it  all.  They  are  really  not  a  family.  Oh,  clear  ! 
I  hope  it  isn't  wicked  for  us  to  be  so  happy  in  our 
children,  Basil." 

"  It 's  a  sin  that  I  think  I  can  brazen  out  at  the 
Day  of  Judgment,"  I  answered.  "What  does  she 
say  when  you  have  her  alone  with  another  woman  rl " 

"  Well,  there  you  've  hit  upon  the  true  test,  my 
dear.  If  a  person 's  genuine,  and  not  a  poseuse,  she 's 
more  interesting  when  you  have  her  alone  with 
another  woman,  than  when  you  have  her  with  a  lot 
of  men.  And  Mrs.  Faulkner  stands  the  test.  Yes, 
she  Js  a  great  creature." 

"  Why,  what  did  she  say  1 " 

"Say?  Nothing!  You  don't  have  to  say  any- 
thing. You  merely  have  to  le" 

"  Oh  !     That  seems  rather  simple." 

"Stuff!  You  know  what  I  mean.  You're  the 
true  blue,  if  you  don't  begin  to  fade  or  change  your 
tone,  in  the  least.  If  you  remain  just  what  you 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  35 

were,  and  are  not  anxious  to  get  away.  If  you  have 
repose,  and  are  unselfish  enough  to  be  truly  polite. 
If  you  make  the  other  woman  that  you  're  alone  with 
feel  that  she 's  just  as  well  worth  while  as  a  man. 
And  that  can't  be  done  by  saying.  Now  do  you 
understand  ? " 

"  Yes  ;  and  it  appears  difficult." 

"  Difficult  1     It 's  next  to  impossible  !  " 

"  And  it  can  all  be  conveyed  by  manner  ? ;; 

"  Of  course  we  talked " 

"  She  must  have  flattered  you  enormously." 

"  She  praised  you  \ " 

"  Oh  !  "  I  said  in  admiration  of  the  way  my  point 
was  turned  against  me.  But  I  was  not  satisfied 
with  my  wife's  judgment  of  Faulkner.  I  could 
not  say  it  was  unjust  to  the  facts  before  her,  but 
I  felt  that  something  was  left  out  of  the  account : 
something  that  she  as  a  woman  and  an  Easterner 
could  not  take  into  the  account.  We  men  and 
we  Westerners  have  a  civilisation  of  our  own. 

She  went  on  to  say,  "  Of  course  I  couldn't  be  with 
her  for  quarter  of  an  hour,  and  especially  after  I  had 
seen  what  he  was,  without  understanding  her  mar 
riage.  She 's  a  great  deal  younger  than  he  is ;  and 


36  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

she  was  earning  her  own  living,  poor  thing,  and 
perhaps  supporting  her  family " 

"  Oh,  oh  !     What  jumps  ! " 

" At  any  rate,  she  was  poor,  and  they  were  poor; 
and  she  was  dazzled  by  his  offer,  and  might  easily 
have  supposed  herself  in  love  with  him.  Her  people 
would  be  flattered  too,  if  they  were  not  quite  up  to 
her,  and  he  was  a  great  swell  among  you,  out  there, 
and  rich,  and  all  that.  Of  course  she  simply  had  to 
marry  him.  And  then — she  outgrew  him.  With 
her  taste  and  her  sense,  it  could  only  be  a  question 
of  time.  I  know  she  was  writhing  inwardly  through 
all  his  pretentious,  ignorant  talk  about  art  and 
literature ;  but  with  her  ideal  of  duty,  she  would 
rather  die  than  let  anybody  see  that  she  didn't  think 
him  the  greatest  and  wisest  of  human  creatures. 
They  have  no  children  ;  and  that  might  be  fatal  to 
any  woman  that  was  less  noble  and  heroic  than  she 
is.  But  she 's  simply  made  him  her  child  since  his 
sickness,  and  devoted  herself  to  him,  and  that 's  been 
their  salvation.  She  won't  let  herself  see  any  fault 
in  him,  or  anything  offensive  or  conceited  or  petty." 

"  Did  she  tell  you  all  this  ? " 

"  What  an  idea !     I  knew  it  from  the  way  she 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  37 

kept  lugging  him  in,  and  relating  everything  to 
him.  You  could  see  she  was  simply  determined  to 
do  it." 

"  Oh  then  you  Ve  romanced  all  this  about  her  ! 
Suppose  I  begin,  now,  and  romance  poor  old  Faulk- 
ner?" 

"  You  're  welcome ;  if  you  can  make  anything  out 
of  him." 

"  Well,  of  course,  I  'm  at  a  disadvantage.  In  the 
first  place,  he  isn't  quite  so  pretty  as  his  wife " 

"No,  he  isn't  I" 

"  And  his  name  isn't  Hermia,  or  Hannah." 

"  Oh,  it  is  Hermia  ! "  my  wife  interrupted.  "  I  'm 
satisfied  of  that.  But  what  geese  her  parents  must 
have  been  to  call  her  so  ! " 

I  ignored  the  interpolation.  "  And  he  hasn't  got  a 
regular  two-horse  carriage  of  a  walk,  nor  immortal  eyes 
with  starlike  sorrows  in  them;  he  seems  plainer  and 
limper  than  ever,  poor  old  fellow.  Ah, my  dear,  our  mis- 
eries don't  embellish  our  persons  very  much,  whatever 
they  do  for  our  souls ;  and  Faulkner's  good  looks — " 

My  wife  had  quite  finished  repairing  her  dis- 
ordered bang,  and  we  had  abandoned  ourselves 
entirely  to  controversy.  A  knock  at  the  door 


38  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

startled  us,  and  it  was  Mrs.  Faulkner's  voice  which 
said  outside,  "  Lunch  is  ready/' 

My  wife  seized  my  wrist  melodramatically,  and 
almost  at  the  moment  of  answering,  in  a  sweet,  high 
society  tone,  "Yes,  yes,  thank  you!  We're  quite 
ready  too  ! "  she  hissed  in  my  ear,  "  Basil !  Do  you 
suppose  she  heard  you  ? " 

"  If  she  did,"  I  said,  "  she  must  have  thought  I 
was  praising  Faulkner's  beauty." 


VI. 


THE  lunch  was  a  proof  of  Mrs.  Faulkner's  native 
skill  as  a  housekeeper,  in  all  its  appointments,  and 
of  her  experience  and  observation  of  certain  details 
of  touch  and  flavour,  acclimated  and  naturalised  to 
the  American  kitchen  from  the  cuisines  of  Southern 
Europe.  It  meant  money,  but  not  money  alone  ;  it 
meant  sympathy  and  appreciation  and  the  artistic 
sense.  I  could  see  that  my  wife  ate  every  morsel 
with  triumph  over  me;  I  could  feel  that  without 
looking  at  her;  and  she  rendered  merit  to  Mrs. 
Faulkner  for  it  all,  as  much  as  if  she  had  cooked  it, 
created  it.  In  fact  I  knew  that  my  wife  had  fallen 
in  love  with  her ;  and  when  you  have  fallen  in  love 
with  a  married  woman  you  must  of  course  hate  her 
husband,  especially  if  you  are  another  woman. 

I  thought  this  reflection  rather  neat,  and  I  wished 
that  I  could  have  a  chance  to  put  it  to  my  wife ;  but 
none  offered  till  it  was  for  ever  too  late ;  none  offered 


40  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

at  all,  in  effect.  After  lunch  we  went  that  walk  they 
had  planned,  and  this  time  Faulkner  took  the  two 
ladies  in  charge,  or  rather  he  fell  to  them,  that  he 
might  tacitly  be  under  his  wife's  care.  I  heard  him, 
as  I  lagged  behind  with  Nevil,  devoting  himself  to 
Mrs.  March  with  his  decorative  politeness,  and  I 
longed  in  vain  to  beg  the  poor  man  to  spare  himself. 

Nevil  and  I  spoke  irrelevancies  till  we  had 
dropped  back  out  of  ear-shot.  Then  he  asked, 
"  How  do  you  find  Faulkner  ? "  and  looked  at  me. 

There  was  no  reason  why  I  should  not  be  honest. 
"Well,  I  confess  he  gave  me  a  great  shock." 

"  When  he  had  that  seizure  1 " 

"Yes." 

"  But  generally  speaking  ? " 

"  Generally  speaking  he  seems  to  me  a  very  sick 
man." 

"  You  see  him  at  his  best,"  said  Nevil ;  and  he 
fetched  a  deep  sigh.  "  This  is  an  exceptionally  good 
day  with  him." 

"  Does  he  suffer  often  in  that  way  ?  " 

"  Yes ;  rather  often." 

"  And  is  he  in  danger  at  such  times  ? " 

"The  greatest.     The  chance  is  that  he  will  not 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  41 

live  through  such  a  seizure;  he  may  die  at  any 
moment  without  the  seizure.  Any  little  excitement 
may  bring  on  the  paroxysm.  I  suppose  it  was  seeing 
you  unexpectedly." 

"  Of  course,  I  didn't  know  we  should  meet  him." 

"Oh,  no  one  was  to  blame,"  said  Nevil.  "The 
inevitable  can't  be  avoided.  Somehow  it  must 
come." 

We  were  silent.  Then  I  said,  "  He  seemed  to  be 
in  great  agony/' 

"I  suppose  we  can't  imagine  such  agony." 

"  And  is  there  no  hope  for  him  1 " 

"  I  understand,  none  at  all." 

"  And  he  must  go  on  suffering  that  way  till 

It's  horrible!  He'd  better  be  dead!"  I  said, 
remembering  the  atrocity  of  the  anguish  which 
Faulkner's  face  had  betrayed :  the  livid  lips,  the* 
suffused  eyes,  the  dumb  ache  visible  in  every  fibre 
of  his  dull,  copper-tinted  visage. 

"  Ah  ! "  said  Nevil,  with  another  long,  quivering 
fligh.  "We  mustn't  allow  ourselves  to  say  such 
things,  or  even  to  think  them.  The  appeal  to  death 
from  the  most  intolerable  pain,  it 's  going  from  the 
known  to  the  unknown.  Death  is  in  the  hands  of 


42  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

God,  as  life  is;  he  giveth  and  he  taketh  away. 
Blessed  be  the  name  of  the  Lord  !  Blessed,  blessed  ! " 
He  dropped  his  head,  and  lifted  it  suddenly.  "  We 
must  say  that  all  the  more  when  we  see  such  hope- 
less, senseless  torment  as  Faulkner's.  I've  often 
tried  to  think  what  Christ  meant  by  that  cry  of  his 
on  the  cross,  *  My  God,  why  hast  thou  forsaken  me  V 
It  couldn't  have  been  that  he  doubted  his  Father ; 
that 's  monstrous.  But  perhaps  in  the  exquisite  tor- 
ture that  he  suffered,  his  weak,  bewildered  human 
nature  forgot,  lost  for  the  dire  moment,  the  reason 
of  pain." 

"  And  is  there  any  reason  for  pain  1 "  I  asked 
sceptically.  "  Or  any  except  that  it  frays  away  the 
tissues  whose  tatters  are  to  let  the  spirit  through  ? " 

"  I  used  not  to  think  so,  and  I  used  to  groan  in 
despair  when  I  could  see  no  other  reason  for  it. 
What  can  we  say  about  the  pain  that  does  not  end 
in  death  ?  Is  it  wasted,  suffered  to  no  end  ?  Shall 
mortal  man  be  more  just  than  God?  Shall  man 
work  wisely,  usefully,  definitely,  and  God  work 
stupidly,  idly,  purposelessly  ?  It 's  impossible  !  Our 
whole  being  denies  it ;  whatever  we  see  or  hear,  of 
waste  or  aimlessness  in  the  universe,  which  seems  to 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  43 

affirm  it,  we  know  to  be  an  illusion :  our  very  nature 
protests  it  so.  But  I  could  not  reason  to  the  reason, 
and  I  owe  my  release  to  the  suggestion  of  a  friend 
whose  experience  of  suffering  had  schooled  him  to 
clearer  and  deeper  insight  than  mine.  He  had  per- 
ceived, or  it  had  been  given  him  to  feel,  that  no  pang 
we  suffer  in  soul  or  sense,  is  lost  or  wasted,  but  is 
suffered  to  the  good  of  some  one,  or  of  all.  How, 
we  shall  some  time  know ;  and  why.  For  the  pre- 
sent the  assurance  that  it  is  so,  is  enough  for  me,  and 
it  enables  me  to  be  patient  with  the  suffering  of  a 
man  who  is  more  to  me  than  any  brother  could  be. 
Sometimes  it  seems  to  me  the  clew  to  the  whole 
labyrinthine  mystery  of  life  and  death,  of  Being  and 
Not-being." 

"It's  a  great  thought,"  I  said.  "It's  immensely 
comforting.  What  does  Faulkner  think  of  it  ? 
Have  you  ever  suggested  it  to  him  ]  " 

I  could  not  tell  whether  he  fancied  an  edge  of 
irony  in  my  question ;  but  it  seemed  as  if  he  spirit- 
ually withdrew  from  me  a  little  way,  and  then  dis- 
ciplined himself  and  returned.  "No,"  he  said 
gently.  "  Faulkner  rejects  everything.  As  he  says, 
he  is  going  it  blind.  He  says  it  will  soon  be  over 


44 

with  him,  and  then  if  he  sleeps,  it  will  be  well  with 
him,  and  if  he  wakes  it  can't  be  worse  with  him  than 
it  is  now ;  and  so  he  won't  worry  about  the  why  or 
wherefore  of  anything  since  he  can't  help  it." 

"  That  doesn't  seem  a  bad  kind  of  philosophy,"  I 
mused  aloud. 

"  No.  Whatever  we  call  such  a  frame  of  mind, 
it 's  practically  trust  in  God.  And  I  don't  judge 
Faulkner,  if  his  resignation  is  sometimes  rather  con- 
temptuous in  its  expression.  I  wish  it  were  other- 
wise ;  but  I  doubt  if  he 's  always  quite  master  of 
himself." 

We  Avalked  slowly  on.  Faulkner,  I  knew,  was 
aware  of  his  condition,  and  I  thought  his  courage 
splendid,  in  view  of  it.  I  wondered  if  his  wife  knew 
it  as  fully  as  he;  probably  she  did;  and  when  I 
considered  this,  I  appeared  to  myself  the  most 
trivial  of  human  beings,  though  I  am  not  so  sure 
now  that  I  was.  We  are  all  what  the  absence, 
not  the  presence,  of  death  has  made  us. 

I  found  myself  at  a  standstill,  and  I  perceived 
that  Nevil  had  halted  me.  "Did  it  strike  you — 
have  you  seen  anything  strange — peculiar — in  Faulk- 
ner's manner  ? " 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  45 

"  No,"  I  returned.     "That  is,  how  do  you  mean?  " 

"  I  've  sometimes  fancied  lately — I've  been  afraid 
— that  his  mind  was  giving  way  under  the  stress  of 
his  suffering.  It 's  something  that  often  happens — 
it 's  something  that  Dr.  Wingate  has  apprehended." 

"  Good  heavens !  That  would  be  too  much.  I 
saw  no  sign  of  it.  He  recurred  once,  just  before 
lunch,  to  that  night  when  we  first  met  at  his  house, 
and  had  that  talk  about  Kant's  dreams,  and  De 
Quincey.  I  thought  he  was  going  to  say  something ; 
but  just  then  the  ladies  came  back  to  us  and  he 
began  to  talk  to  them." 

Nevil  looked  at  me  fixedly.  "  Very  likely  I  'm 
mistaken.  Perhaps  my  own  mind  isn't  standing  it 
very  well !  But  the  fear  of  that  additional  horror,  I 
assure  you  that  it  makes  my  heart  stop  when  I  think 
of  it.  I  ought  to  go  away.  I  ought  to  be  at  home ; 
I  Ve  spent  the  past  year  in  Europe  with  the  Faulk- 
ners,  as — as  their  guest — and  I  have  no  right  to  a 
vacation  this  summer.  There  are  duties,  interests, 
claims  upon  me,  that  I  'm  neglecting  in  my  proper 
work ;  and  yet  I  can't  tear  myself  away  from  him — 
from  them." 

We  stood  facing  each  other,  and  Nevil  was  speak- 


46  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

ing  with  the  perturbation  of  an  anxiety  still  sup- 
pressed, but  now  finding  vent  for  the  first  time,  and 
carrying  us  deep  into  an  intimacy  unwarranted  by 
the  casual  character  of  our  acquaintance. 

I  heard  my  wife's  voice  calling,  "  Come,  come ! " 
and  I  looked  up  to  see  both  of  the  ladies  waving 
their  handkerchiefs  from  an  open  gate  where  they 
stood,  and  beckoning  us  on. 

"  Oh  yes,"  said  Nevil.     "  That 's  the  old  garden." 


VII. 


SOME  former  proprietor  had  built  a  paling  of 
slender  strips  of  wood  ten  or  twelve  feet  high,  and 
set  so  close  together  as  almost  to  touch  one  another ; 
and  in  this  shelter  from  the  salt  gales  had  planted  a 
garden  on  the  southward,  seaward  slope,  which  must 
once  have  nourished  in  delicious  luxuriance.  The 
paling,  weather-beaten  a  silvery  grey,  and  blotched 
with  lichens,  sagged  and  swayed  all  out  of  plumb, 
with  here  and  there  a  belvedere  trembling  upon  rot- 
ting posts,  and  reached  by  broken  steps,  for  the  out- 
look over  a  tumult  of  vast  rocks  to  the  illimitable 
welter  of  the  sea.  Within  the  garden  close  there 
were  old  greenhouses  and  graperies,  their  roofs 
sunken  in  and  their  glass  shattered,  where  every 
spring  the  tall  weeds  sprang  up  to  the  light,  and 
withered  in  midsummer  for  want  of  moisture,  and 
the  Black  Hamburgs  and  Sweetwaters  set  in  large 
clusters  whose  berries  mildewed  and  burst,  and 


48  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

mouldered  away  in  never-riping  decay.  Broken 
flower-pots  strewed  the  ground  about  them,  and 
filled  the  tangles  of  the  grass ;  but  nature  took  up 
the  word  from  art,  and  continued  the  old  garden  in 
her  wilding  fashion  to  an  effect  of  disordered  love- 
liness that  was  full  of  poetry  sad  to  heart-break. 
Neglected  rose-bushes  straggled  and  fell  in  the  high 
grass,  their  leaves  tattered  and  skeletoned  by  slugs 
and  blight;  but  here  and  there  they  still  lifted  a 
belated  flower.  The  terraced  garden  beds  were 
dense  with  witch-grass,  through  which  the  black- 
berry vines  trailed  their  leaves,  already  on  fire  with 
autumn ;  young  sumach-trees  and  Balm  of  Gilead 
scrub  had  sprung  up  in  the  paths,  and  about  among 
the  abandon  and  oblivion  of  former  symmetry,  stiff 
borders  of  box  gave  out  their  pungent  odour  in  the 
sun  that  shone  through  clumps  of  tiger-lilies.  The 
pear-trees  in  their  places  had  been  untouched  by  the 
pruning-knife  for  many  a  year,  but  they  bore  on 
their  knotty  and  distorted  scions,  swollen  to  black 
lumps,  crops  of  gnarled  and  misshapen  fruit  that 
bowed  their  branches  to  the  ground ;  some  peach- 
trees  held  a  few  leprous  peaches,  pale,  and  spotted 
with  the  gum  that  exuded  from  their  limbs  and 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  49 

trunks;  over  staggering  trellises  the  grape-vines 
clung,  and  dangled  imperfect  bunches  of  Isabellas 
and  Concords. 

"  Well,  how  do  you  like  it  ? "  asked  Faulkner,  with 
a  sort  of  pride  in  our  sensation,  as  if  he  had  invented 
the  place. 

"  Perfect !  Perfect ! "  cried  my  wife  absorbing  all 
its  sentiment  in  a  long,  in-drawn  sigh.  "Nothing 
could  possibly  be  better.  You  can't  believe  you  're 
in  America  here  ! " 

He  smiled  in  sympathy,  and  said,  "  No,  for  all 
practical  purposes  this  is  as  old  as  Caesar.  That  'a 
what  I  used  to  feel  over  there.  You  can  hold  only 
just  so  much  antiquity.  The  ruin  of  twenty  years, 
if  it 's  complete  in  its  way,  can  fill  you  as  full  as  the 
ruin  of  a  thousand." 

"Yes,  that's  true,"  my  wife  answered,  and  I  saw 
her  eyes  begin  to  light  up  with  liking  for  a  man  who 
could  express  her  feeling  so  well. 

"But  to  enjoy  perfectly  a  melancholy,  a  desola- 
tion, a  crazy  charm,  a  dead  and  dying  beauty  like 
this,"  he  went  on,  "  one  ought  to  be  very  young  and 
prosperous  and  happy.  Then  it  would  exhale  all  the 
sweetness  of  its  melancholy,  and  distil  into  one's  cup 
D 


50  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

the  drop  of  pathos  that  gives  pleasure  its  keenest 
thrill."  His  voice  broke  with  a  feeling  that  forbade 
me  to  censure  his  words  for  magniloquence. 

It  seemed  to  make  his  wife  uneasy ;  perhaps  from 
long,  close  observation  of  him  she  knew  how  often 
the  spiritual  throe  runs  into  the  physical  pang,  and 
feared  for  the  effect  of  his  mood  upon  him. 

"  Shall  we  go  on  and  show  them  the  rocks  from 
the  Point,  or  from  one  of  the  belvederes  here  ?  "  she 
asked. 

"  I  don't  care,"  he  said  wearily ;  and  again  I  saw 
that  deadliness  in  the  look  he  gave  her.  Then  he 
seemed  to  recollect  himself,  and  added  politely,  "I  'm 
afraid  of  those  belvederes;  you  can't  tell  what 
moment  they  're  going  to  give  way.  Better  go  out 
to  the  Point." 

"Do  you  think,"  she  entreated,  "you  had  better 
walk  so  far  1 " 

"Well,  perhaps  March  will  stay  here  with  me 
a  while,  and  we  can  follow  you  later.  I  'm  all  right ; 
only  a  little  tired." 

I  acquiesced,  of  course,  and  the  ladies,  after  the 
usual  nutter  of  civilities,  started  on.  Nevil  lingered 
to  ask,  "  Doug,  don't  you  think  I  'd  better  go  back 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  51 

and  leave  word  for  the  doctor  where  he  '11  find  you,  if 
lie  happens  to  come  before  we  return  to  the  house  ]  " 

"Oh,  I've  arranged  all  that,"  said  Faulkner,  with 
a  kind  of  dryness,  as  it  seemed,  though  it  might  have 
been  merely  a  sick  man's  impatience ;  and  he  did  not 
look  up  after  Nevil  as  he  turned  away. 

We  stood  silent  a  moment,  after  he  left  us,  and  I 
said,  to  break  the  constraint,  "  How  much  all  this 
seems  like  those  been-there-before  seizures  which  we 
used  to  make  so  much  of  when  we  were  young. 
This  garden,  this  sky,  the  sea  out  there,  the  very  feel 
of  the  air,  are  as  familiar  to  me  as  any  most  intimate 
experience  of  my  life,  and  yet  I  know  it's  all  as 
unreal,  as  unsubstantial  historically,  as  the  shadow 
of  a  dream." 

"  How  horribly,"  said  Faulkner,  as  if  he  had  not 
heard  me,  "those  old  flower-beds  look  like  graves. 
I  was  going  to  sit  down  on  one  of  them,  but  I  can't 
do  it." 

"  It  would  have  been  pretty  damp,  anyway ; 
wouldn't  it  ?  "  I  suggested. 

"  Perhaps.  We  can  sit  in  that  idiotic  arbour,  I 
suppose." 

He  nodded  at  the  frail  structure  on  the  terrace 


52  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

below  where  we  stood :  two  sides  of  trellis  meeting 
in  an  arch,  and  canted  over  like  the  belvederes ;  a 
dead  grape-vine  hung  upon  it.  I  stepped  down,  and 
made  sure  of  the  benches  which  faced  each  other 
under  the  arch.  "Yes;  they're  all  eight.  Nothing 
could  be  better,"  and  Faulkner  followed  me,  and 
took  one  of  them.  After  some  experiment  of  its 
strength,  he  leaned  back  in  the  corner  of  the  arbour, 
and  put  his  legs  up  along  the  seat. 

The  hoarse  plunge  and  wash  of  the  surf  on  the 
rocks  below  the  garden  filled  the  air  like  the  texture 
of  a  denser  silence ;  around  us  the  crickets  and  grass- 
hoppers blent  their  monotonies  with  it, 

"  Why  do  you  call  the  shadow  of  a  dream  unsub- 
stantial 1 "  ho  demanded. 

"  Well,  I  don't  know,"  I  said.  "  I  don't  suppose 
I  meant  to  say  that  it  was  more  unsubstantial  than 
other  shadows." 

"  No.  Of  course."  He  dropped  his  eyelids,  and 
went  on .  talking  with  them  closed ;  the  effect  was 
curious;  perhaps  he  found  he  could  keep  himself 
calmer  in  that  way.  "  I  began  to  speak  to  you  a 
little  while  ago  of  the  talk  we  had  that  night  at  my 
house  about  old  Kant's  nightmares." 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  53 

"  Oh  yes ;  poor  old  fellow  !  It  was  awful,  his 
being  afraid  to  go  to  sleep  because  he  was  sure  to 
have  them.  I  don't  know  but  that 's  a  touch  worse 
than  not  being  able  to  go  to  sleep  at  all.  Just 
imagine :  as  soon  as  you  drop  off  to  refieshing 
slumber,  as  you  would  otherwise  expect,  you  find 
you've  dropped  as  it  were  into  hell." 

"Yes;  that's  it,"  said  Faulkner.  "I  wonder  if 
it  was  the  same  thing  over  and  over." 

"I  don't  remember  what  De  Quincey  says  about 
that ;  and  I  don't  know  whether  that  would  be  worse 
or  not.  Perhaps,  torment  for  torment,  infernal 
monotony  would  be  more  infernal  than  infernal 
variety.  But  there  couldn't  be  much  choice." 

Faulkner  did  not  speak  at  once.  Then  he  asked, 
"  Did  you  ever  have  a  recurrent  dream  1 " 

"  A  dream  that  repeated  itself  several  times  the 
same  night  ]  Yes,  I  Ve  waked  from  a  dream — or 
seemed  to  wake — and  then  fallen  asleep  and  dreamed 
it  again;  and  then  waked  and  slept  and  dreamed 
it  a  third  time.  I  suppose  nearly  every  one  has  had 
that  experience." 

"  I  don't  mean  that  kind  of  dream,"  said 
Faulkner,  "  I  mean  a  dream  that  recurs  regularly, 


54  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

once  a  week  or  so,  with  little  or  no  change  in  its 
incidents." 

"  No ;  I  never  had  that  kind  of  dream ;  I  don't 
know  that  I  ever  heard  of  such  a  dream.  I  re- 
member your  speaking  that  night  about  shameful 
dreams,  that  projected  a  sense  of  dishonour  over 
half  the  next  day.  I  've  had  that  kind.  They  're  a 
great  nuisance.  And  then,  if  I  've  made  free,  as  one  '& 
appallingly  apt  to  do  in  such  dreams,  with  persons 
of  my  acquaintance,  it's  extremely  embarrassing  to 
meet  them."  Faulkner  smiled,  and  I  asked,  "Do 
you  find  that  your  dream  habit  has  changed  since 
you  were  younger  ? " 

"  Yes ;  the  dreams  are  more  vivid ;  but  usually  I 
don't  remember  them  so  distinctly.  I  suppose  it 's 
like  life  :  we,  experience  things  with  a  sharper  and 
fuller  consciousness  than  we  once  did,  but  they  leave 
less  impression." 

"  Yes,  yes  ! "  I  assented.     "  I  wonder  why." 

"  Oh,  I  suppose  because  the  fact  is  inscribed  upon 
a  surface  that 's  already  occupied.  We  're  all  old 
palimpsests  by  the  time  we  reach  forty.  In  youth 
we  present  a  tabula  rasa  to  experience." 

"  Then  I  should  think  we  wouldn't   receive  im- 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  55 

pressions  with  that  sharper  and  fuller  consciousness," 
I  suggested.     "And  yet  I  know  we  do." 

"  I  don't  understand  it  either,"  said  Faulkner. 

"There's  one  thing  I've  noticed  of  late  years  in 
my  own  dream  habit,  which  I  don't  remember  in  the 
past.  I  go  to  sleep  sometimes — almost  always  in  my 
afternoon  naps — with  a  perfectly  wide-awake  know- 
ledge that  I  'm  doing  so ;  and  I  'm  able  to  pass  the 
bounds  with  my  eyes  open,  as  it  were.  I  can  say  to 
myself  as  I  drowse  off,  'This  is  a  dream  thought, 
if  I  find  something  grotesque  floating  through  my 
mind,  and  then,  'This  is  a  waking  thought,'  when 
there  is  something  logical  and  matter-of-fact.  I  come 
and  go,  that  way,  half  a  dozen  times  before  I  lose 
myself." 

"That  is  very  curious,  very  interesting,"  said 
Faulkner;  and  he  raised  his  heavy  eyelids  for  a 
smiling  glance  at  me,  and  then  let  them  drop.  His 
face  sobered  almost  to  frowning  sternness  as  he 
went  on.  "There's  a  whole  region  of  experience — 
half  the  map  of  our  life — that  they  tell  us  must 
always  remain  a  wilderness,  with  all  its  extraordinary 
phenomena  irredeemably  savage  and  senseless.  For 
my  part,  I  don't  believe  it.  I  will  put  the  wisdom 


56  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

of  the  ancients  before  the  science  of  the  moderns, 
and  I  will  say  with  Elihu,  'In  a  dream,  in  a  vision 
of  the  night,  when  deep  sleep  falleth  upon  men,  in 
slumberings  upon  the  bed ;  then  He  openeth  the  ears 
of  men,  and  sealeth  their  instruction/  " 

"It's  noble  poetry,"  I  said. 

"  It's  more  than  that,"  said  Faulkner.  "  It 's  truth." 

"Perhaps  it  was  in  the  beginning,  when  men 
lived  nearer  to  the  origin  of  life,  but  I  doubt  if  it 's 
more  than  noble  poetry  now ;  though  that  of  course 
is  truth  in  its  way." 

Faulkner  opened  his  eyes  and  let  his  legs  drop  to 
the  ground.  I  saw  that  my  dissent  had  excited  him, 
and  I  was  sorry ;  I  resolved  to  agree  with  him  at  the 
first  possible  moment. 

"Why  should  God  be  farther  from  men  in  our 
days  than  he  was  in  Job's  ?  "  he  demanded. 

"It  isn't  that,"  I  said.  "It's  men  who  are 
farther  from  God." 

"  Oh  !  That 's  a  pretty  quibble.  But  it  gives  you 
away,  all  the  same.  Do  you  mean  to  say  that  if  you 
had  a  graphic  and  circumstantial  dream,  about 
something  of  importance  to  you ;  something  you 
intended  to  do,  a  journey  you  intended  to  take,  or  an 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  57 

enterprise  you  were  thinking  of,  and  your  dream 
contained  a  forecast  or  warning,  do  you  mean  to  say 
you  wouldn't  be  influenced  by  it  1 " 

"  Certainly,  I  should,"  I  answered ;  and  I  couldn't 
help  adding,  "or  rather  the  ancestral  tent-dweller 
within  me  would  be  influenced." 

"  Oh  ! "  Faulkner  sneered.  "  God's  neighbour,  or 
the  neighbour  of  God  ? " 

I  had  made  a  bad  business  of  trying  to  agree  with 
him.  I  braced  myself  for  another  effort.  "Why, 
Faulkner,  /  don't  deny  anything.  All  that  I  contend 
for  is  that  we  should  not  throw  away  '  the  long  result 
of  time,'  and  return  to  the  bondage  of  the  supersti- 
tions that  cursed  the  childhood  of  the  race,  that 
blackened  every  joy  of  its  youth  and  spread  a  veil  of 
innocent  blood  between  it  and  the  skies.  There  may 
be  something  in  dreams ;  if  there  is,  our  thoughts, 
not  our  fears,  will  find  it  out.  I  am  a  coward,  like 
everybody  else ;  perhaps  rather  more  of  a  coward ; 
but  if  I  had  a  dream  that  contained  a  forecast  or  a 
warning  of  evil,  I  should  feel  it  my  duty  in  the 
interest  of  civilisation  to  defy  it ;  though  I  don't  say 
I  should  be  able  to  do  it.  On  the  contrary,  I  think 
very  likely  I  should  lie  down  under  it,  and  shudder 


58  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

out   some   propitiatory   aspiration   to    the  offended 
fetish  that  was  threatening  me." 

Faulkner  seemed  a  little  placated.  "  I  understand 
what  you  mean ;  and  I  know  the  danger  of  giving 
way  to  the  nervous  tremors  that  vibrate  in  us  from 
the  horrible  old  times  when,  on  this  very  coast,  a 
wretched  woman  would  have  been  caught  up  and 
flung  in  jail,  and  hung  on  the  gallows  because  some 
distempered  child  had  dreamed  that  it  saw  her  with 
the  Black  Man  in  the  forest.  But  I  'm  not  ready  to 
say  that  a  dream,  recurring  and  recurring  with  the 
clearest  circumstance,  and  without  variation  in  its 
details,  is  idle  and  meaningless.  Who  is  that  French- 
man who  wrote  about  the  diseases  of  personality? 
Ribot!  "Well,  he  tells  how  people  about  to  be 
attacked  by  disease  are  '  warned  in  a  dream '  of  what 
is  to  happen.  A  man  dreams  of  a  mad  dog,  and 
wakes  up  with  a  malignant  ulcer  in  the  spot  where 
he  was  bitten ;  dreams  of  an  epileptic,  and  wakes  to 
have  his  first  fit ;  dreams  of  a  deaf-mute,  and  wakes 
with  a  palsied  tongue.  He  says  that  these  are 
intimations  of  calamity  from  the  recesses  of  the 
organism  to  the  nerve  centres,  which  we  don't  notice 
in  the  hurly-burly  of  conscious  life." 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  59 

"  Yes,  I  remember  that  passage.  And  I  have  had 
one  such  experience*  myself,"  I  said. 

"Very  well,  then,"  said  Faulkner.  "If  in  the 
physical,  why  not  in  the  moral  world?  If  you 
dream  persistently  of  evil,  of  perfidy,  of  treachery, 
so  distinctly  and  perfectly  bodied  forth  that  when 
you  wake  the  dream  seems  the  reality,  and  your 
consciousness  the  delusion,  why  should  you  treat 
your  vision  with  contempt  ?  Why  should  not  the 
psychologist  respect  it  as  something  quite  as  gravely 
significant  in  its  way  as  those  dream  hints  of 
impending  malady  which  no  pathologist  would 
ignore  1 " 

I  now  perceived  that  I  was  in  the  presence  of 
what  was  on  Faulkner's  mind.  I  did  not  know 
what  it  was,  and  I  did  not  expect  that  he  would  tell 
me.  I  did  not  wish  him  to  tell  me ;  I  fancied  that 
I  might  help  him  better  if  I  did  not  know  just  the 
make  and  manner  of  his  trouble ;  and  I  longed  to 
help  him,  for  I  saw  that  he  longed  for  help.  I  felt 
that  his  logic  was  false,  and  I  believed  that  he  had 
entangled  himself  in  it  only  after  many  attempts  to 
escape  it ;  but  I  did  not  know  just  which  point  of  'it 
to  touch  first.  I  felt  him  looking  at  me  with  im- 


60  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

ploring  challenge,  but  I  did  not  lift  my  head  till  I 
heard  a  step  in  the  long,  tangled  grass,  and  heard 
the  voice  of  Dr.  Wingate  in  a  cheerful,  "  Hello ! 
hello  !  You  here,  March  ?  Well,  that 's  good  ! " 

Another  step,  another  voice  would  have  been 
startling ;  but  these  were  with  us,  in  a  manner, 
before  we  heard  them,  and  they  brought  support  and 
repose  with  them. 

"I'm  glad  to  see  you,  doctor,"  I  said,  without 
making  ceremony  of  the  greetings  which  I  saw  ho 
was  disposed  to  ignore. 

He  shook  hands  impartially  with  Faulkner  and 
with  me  as  if  he  were  no  more  interested  in  one  than 
the  other ;  his  large,  honest,  friendly  stomach  bowed 
out  as  he  stood  a  moment  wiping  the  sweat  from  his 
forehead,  and  looking  round  him.  "Isn't  this  a  nice 
old  place  1  I  never  see  this  garden  without  a  kind  of 
satisfaction  in  it  as  one  of  the  things  that  money  can't 
buy.  There  are  mighty  few  of  them.  But  here 's 
one  that  only  the  loss  of  money  can  buy.  Heigh  1 " 

Wingate  sat  down,  tentatively  at  first,  on  the  other 
end  of  my  seat,  and  faced  Faulkner,  still  without 
seeming  to  take  any  special  interest  in  him. 

I  repeated,  "I  'm  glad  to  see  you,  doctor;  and  I'm 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  61 

particularly  glad  to  sec  you  in  a  metaphysical  mood, 
for  Faulkner,  here,-  has  got  me  in  a  corner,  and  I 
want  you  to  get  me  out." 

"Ah?  Am  I  in  a  metaphysical  mood?  What's 
your  corner  ? "  The  doctor  worked  his  elbow  into 
the  trellis  behind  him,  and  then  swayed  back 
on  it. 

"We  were  talking  about  dreams,"  I  said,  "and  we 
had  got  as  far  as  Ribot,  and  his  instances  of  dreams 
that  prophesy  maladies.  You  know  them." 

"Oh  yes.     Well?" 

"  Well,  Faulkner  says  if  a  man  dreams  of  physical 
evil,  and  the  dream  is  prophetic,  or  worthy  of  scien- 
tific regard,  why  shouldn't  the  dream  that  forebodes 
moral  evil  be  considered  seriously  too ;  why  shouldn't 
it  be  held  to  be  truly  prophetic  ? " 

The  doctor  smiled.  "It  seems  to  me  you're 
pretty  easily  cornered.  I  should  say  that  the  dream 
of  moral  evil  should  certainly  be  seriously  considered  : 
not  as  prophetic  in  the  least  of  what  it  foreboded, 
but  as  prophetic  of  very  grave  mental  disturbance, — 
if  it  persisted.  I  should  be  afraid  that  it  was  the 
rehearsal  of  a  mania  that  was  soon  to  burst  out  in 
waking  madness.  If  it  persisted,"  said  the  doctor, 


62  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

looking  still  at  me,  "  and  he  yielded  to  it,  I  should 
feel  anxious  for  the  dreamer's  sanity." 

Faulkner  sat  with  his  face  twisted  away  from  us, 
as  if  the  doctor  had  been  looking  at  him,  and  he 
wished  to  avoid  his  eye.  "I  don't  see,"  I  said,  "but 
what  that  settles  it,  Faulkner  1 " 

"  Oh,  it 's  a  very  good  answer  in  its  way,"  said 
Faulkner,  still  without  looking  at  us.  "But  it  takes 
no  account  of  the  spiritual  element  in  such  experi- 
ences." 

"  No,"  said  the  doctor,  "  and  I  should  be  ashamed 
of  it  if  it  did.  As  long  as  we  have  on  this  muddy 
vesture  of  decay,  the  less  medicine  meddles  and 
makes  with  our  immortal  part,  the  better.  Of 
course,  I'm  not  speaking  for  the  Christian  Scien- 
tists." 

"  Then  you  don't  consider  the  mind  immortal  1 " 
demanded  Faulkner. 

"I  don't  consider  the  brain  immortal.  And  I 
think  I  Ve  seen  the  mind  in  decay." 

We  were  all  silent.  I  found  a  comfort  in  this 
robust  and  clear  refusal  of  Wingate's  to  dally  with 
any  sort  of  ifs  and  ans,  and  to  deal  only  with  the 
facts  of  experience,  which  I  felt  must  impart  itself  in 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  G3 

some  measure  to  Faulkner,  even  through  his  refusal. 
At  the  same  time  I  was  a  little  ashamed  of  not 
having  myself  been  able  to  come  to  his  rescue.  The 
silence  prolonged  itself,  and  I  began  to  see  that  the 
doctor  wished  to  be  alone  with  his  patient,  who 
perhaps  was  willing  to  part  with  me,  too. 

Wingate  asked,  "  Where  's  Mrs.  Faulkner  ? "  and 
this  gave  me  my  chance  to  get  away  with  dignity. 

"  She  and  my  wife  are  off  at  the  Point,  looking 
at  the  rocks.  I  '11  go  and  tell  her  you  've  come." 

"  Oh,  there 's  nothing  especial.  I  merely  wanted 
to  ask  her  a  few  little  things.  You  needn't  hurry 
her  back." 

He  left  his  place  beside  me,  and  went  over  to 
Faulkner,  whose  wrist  he  took  between  his  fingers. 
He  had  dropped  it  when  I  looked  back,  after  I  left 
them,  and  then,  with  the  distinctness  that  one  sense 
lends  another,  I  partly  heard,  partly  saw  him  say : 
"  If  you  don't,  it  will  not  only  drive  you  mad ;  it 
will  kill  you." 

The  doctor's  voice  came  to  me  in  the  same  key  of 
strenuous,  almost  angry  remonstrance,  after  I  hurried 
into  the  lane  from  the  garden,  but  I  could  not  make 
out  the  words  any  longer. 


VIII. 

I  REACHED  the  cliff  that  overlooked  the  rocks,  and 
stood  a  moment  staring  out  on  that  image  of  eternity; 
the  infinite  waters,  seasonless,  changeless,  boundless. 
The  tide  was  still  coming  in,  with  that  slow,  resist- 
less invasion  of  the  land,  which  is  like  the  closing  in 
of  death  upon  the  borders  of  life.  In  successive 
plunges  it  pounded  on  the  outer  reef,  and  brawled 
foaming  in  over  the  broken  granite  shore,  lifting  and 
tossing  the  sea-weed  of  the  boulders,  which  spread 
and  swayed  before  it  like  the  hair  of  drowned  Titans 
and  lunged  into  the  hollow  murmuring  caverns,  to 
suck  back  again,  and  pull  down  a  stretch  of  gravelly 
beach,  with  a  long  snarl  of  the  pebbles  torn  from 
their  beds.  A  mist  was  coming  up  from  the  farther 
ocean ;  and  the  sails  on  the  horizon  were  melting 
into  it. 

I  saw  my  wife  down  on  the  rocks  near  the  water, 
with  Nevil;  on  a  height  nearer  me  stood  Mrs. 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  65 

Faulkner,  fronting  seaward,  a  solitary  figure  that 
looked  wistful  on  the  peak  that  lifted  and  defined 
her  against  the  curtain  of  the  waters.  She  was  quite 
motionless,  like  a  statue  there.  She  stirred,  and 
exchanged  with  those  below  gesticulations  of  the 
gay  meaningless  sort  which  people  make  one  another 
for  no  reason  in  the  presence  of  scenes  of  natural 
grandeur.  She  faced  about,  and  at  sight  of  me 
began  instantly  to  run  toward  me.  I  waved  to  her 
not  to  come,  and  hurried  down  the  rocks  to  meet 
her.  But  I  could  not  stop  her,  and  she  was  quite 
breathless  when  we  reached  each  other. 

"What— what  is  it  ? "  she  gasped. 

"  Nothing  whatever  ! "  I  returned.  "  Doctor  Win- 
gate  is  with  Mr.  Faulkner,  and  I  Ve  profited  by  the 
opportunity  to  come  off  and  admire  your  rocks. 
Will  you  tell  me  how  my  wife  ever  got  down  there 
alive,  or  expects  to  get  back  1 " 

"Does  he  want  me  1     Did  the  doctor  send  for  me1? " 

"Not  just  at  present,"  I  answered  her  first  question. 
"  He  asked  for  you,  but  he  said  there  was  no  occasion 
for  hurry  ? " 

"Oh,  then,  I'll  go  at  once,"  she  said,  quite  as  if  I 
had  begged  her  not  to  lose  a  moment. 
E 


66  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

My  wife  and  Nevil  had  now  caught  sight  of  us 
together,  and  started  excitedly  up  the  rocks.  I 
waved  and  beckoned  to  them  in  vain;  it  was  a  panic. 
I  laughed  to  see  Nevil  clamber  upward  forgetful  of 
my  wife,  and  then,  recollecting  her,  go  back,  and 
pull  her  after  him.  At  one  point  of  his  progress  he 
lost  his  balance,  and  rolled  down  to  her  feet.  Mrs. 
Faulkner  laughed  hysterically  with  me,  and  then 
began  to  cry. 

"  He 's  up  again — he  isn't  hurt !  "  I  shouted. 
"  Good  heavens  !  What  an  unnecessary  excitement ! 
Didn't  you  all  expect  me  to  come  ?  Did  you  suppose 
I  could  come  invisibly  1 " 

"No — no!  But  we  expected  Mr.  Faulkner  with 
you  ! " 

"Yes,  that's  all  right.  But  he  preferred  to 
remain  with  the  doctor.  I  should  have  stayed  myself, 
if  I  could  have  imagined  the  trouble  I  was  going  to 
make." 

"I  will  run  on,"  she  said.  "You  can  wait  for 
them." 

"Why,  there's  no  occasion  for  running."  But  she 
had  already  started,  and  was  flying  down  the  long 
slope  that  rose  to  the  cliff,  and  I  had  no  choice  but 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  G7 

to  wait,  and  try  to  keep  the  others  from  following 
her  at  the  same  breakneck  speed.  I  was  getting 
angry,  and  my  temper  was  not  improved  when  my 
wife  called  out  as  soon  as  she  was  within  ear-shot, 
"What  is  it?  What  is  it?  Has  anything  hap- 
pened ? " 

"  No  !     Nothing  whatever  ! " 

"  Then  what  made  you  wave  to  us  ?  You  have 
almost  killed  us  ! " 

"  I  waved  to  stop  you." 

She  did  not  regard  the  words.  "  What  is  Mrs. 
Faulkner  running  so,  for  ? " 

"You'd  better  ask  her,  if  you  ever  overtake  her. 
/  don't  know.  I  told  her  the  doctor  said  she  needn't 
hurry,  and  she  started  off  like  the  wind." 

"  0  my  goodness  !     Is  the  doctor  there  ?  " 

"Really,  my  dear,"  I  began;  but  Nevil  interposed 
in  time. 

"We  rather  expected  him  to-day,"  he  said  to  my 
wife. 

"  Oh  yes  !  Mr.  Faulkner  said  so,"  she  recollected. 
"But  of  course  Mrs.  Faulkner  is  so  anxious  about 
her  husband  that  she  can't  bear  to  lose  a  word  of 
what  the  doctor  says  to  him." 


68  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

"Well,  that's  something  intelligible,"  I  said,  as 
we  moved  slowly  after  her ;  she  was  just  vanishing 
into  the  wilding  growth  of  trees  that  skirted  the  old 
garden.  "But  you  can  imagine  my  astonishment  in 
coming  up  with  a  reassuring  message,  to  have  it  act 
upon  her  like  a  fire-alarm.  However,  my  calming  pre- 
sence seems  to  have  had  that  effect  upon  everybody." 

Nevil  did  not  concern  himself  with  my  personal 
grievance.  In  that  tumble  of  his  he  must  have 
fallen  upon  some  scene  of  extinct  revelry,  for  he 
carried  on  his  back  a  collection  of  broken  egg-shells, 
clamshells,  bits  of  charred  drift-wood,  burnt  sea- 
weed, and  other  vestiges  of  a  former  clam-bake. 
"  Allow  me ! "  I  said,  and  I  brushed  some  of  them 
off,  as  he  walked  and  talked  along  unheeding. 

"No  one  can  imagine,"  he  said,  " the  -perpetual 
tension  of  her  anxiety,  her  incessant  devotion." 

"  Oh,  /  can ! "  said  my  wife,  with  a  meritorious 
effect  of  being  one  of  the  true  faith  as  regarded  Mrs. 
Faulkner,  and  of  excluding  me  tacitly  from  the  com- 
munion, which  I  found  much  harder  to  bear  than 
Nevil's  indifference. 

"  Oh,"  I  said  coolly,  "  isn't  it  such  as  any  woman 
would  feel  in  her  circumstances  1 " 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  69 

My  wife  gave  me  a  look  that  I  should  have 
deserved,  perhaps,  if  I  had  blasphemed. 

"No  one,"  said  Nevil,  "was  ever  in  quite  such 
painful  circumstances.  If  you  had  seen  the  strain 
she  is  under,  as  I  have,  for  a  whole  year,  you  would 
understand  this." 

"  Yes,  yes.  Of  course.  It 's  as  painful  as  it  can 
be  ;  but  it  isn't  more  painful  than  the  case  of  many 
another  woman  who  has  seen  her  husband  suffering, 
and  dying  by  moments  under  her  eyes."  I  obeyed  a 
perverse  impulse  to  go  on  and  say,  though  I  felt  my 
wife's  eyes  dwelling  in  horrified  reproach  upon  me, 
"  I  don't  mean  to  depreciate  Mrs.  Faulkner  in  any 
sense,  or  to  question  the  exquisite  poignancy  of  her 
trials  and  her  self-sacrifice." 

"  But  you  do  \ "  said  my  wife.  "  You  do  loth  ! 
You  are  talking  of  something  you  don't  know  about. 
If  you  did,  you  couldn't — or,  I  hope  at  least  you 
wouldn't- — talk  so." 

Nevil  said,  with  the  humane  wish  to  mitigate  the 
effect  of  her  seventy,  "  Mrs.  March  has  divined  the 
peculiarly  painful  feature  in  the  case.  It  isn't  a  thing 
we  should  have  ventured  to  speak  of,  if  we  hadn't 
somehow  seemed  to  approach  it  simultaneously." 


70  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

"  You  mean,"  I  said,  "  his  aversion  to  her  1 " 

"  Yes  ! "  answered  Nevil,  in  astonishment.  "  Have 
you — have  you  noticed  it,  too  ? " 

"From  the  first  moment  I  saw  them  together. 
But  it  wasn't  a  thing  I  could  make  sure  of  until 
now.  I  suppose  I  was  waiting  to  approach  it 
simultaneously,  too." 

Nevil  did  not  heed  the  little  jibe,  and  my  wife 
noticed  it  only  to  contemn  it  with  a  look.  "  And 
how  do  you  account  for  it  ? "  he  implored.  "  How 
can  you  explain  such  a  terrible  thing  ?  That  he 
should  have  conceived  this  unkindness,  this  repul- 
sion for  that  hapless  creature,  whose  whole  existence 
is  centred  in  her  love  of  him  1  Ah,  you  haven't 

seen There  have  been  times I  suppose  I 

am  speaking  to  friends  of  his  who  feel  exactly  as 
I  do  about  him  ? " 

"  Oh  yes,  indeed ! "  cried  my  wife,  as  one  in 
authority  for  both  of  us. 

"There  have  been  times,  within  the  past  six 
months,  and  especially  during  the  past  month,  when, 
if  I  hadn't  known  it  was  the  same  man,  I  could 
hardly  have  believed  it  was  Faulkner,  in  his  treat- 
ment of  her." 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  71 

"  Perhaps  it  wasn't  Faulkner,"  I  suggested. 

"You  mean  that— 

"He  isn't  himself.     You  mentioned  it." 

"Yes.  I  should  be  glad  to  believe  that,  some- 
times, dreadful  as  it  is.  It 's  so  much  less  dreadful 
than  the  idea  that  he  could  change  toward  her  in 
this  hour  of  their  dire  need  and  mutual  helplessness  ; 
and  should  leave  her  widowed  of  his  love  before  she 
is  widowed  of  his  life."  Nevil  went  on,  "You 
couldn't  at  all  appreciate  the  situation  unless  you 
had  known  them  together  from  the  beginning  of 
their  acquaintance,  as  I  have.  In  fact,  I  was  the 
means  of  bringing  them  together ;  at  least  I  intro- 
duced them  to  each  other.  With  him  it  was  a  case 
of  love  at  first  sight.  He  was  much  older  than  she 
—ten  or  twelve  years ;  but  I  don't  believe  anybody 
had  ever  struck  Faulkner's  fancy  before,  in  spite  of 
all  that  talk  about  Miss  Ludlow." 

"  Oh,"  I  said,  with  a  smile  of  reminiscence,  "every- 
body was  expected  to  be  in  love  with  Miss  Ludlow 
and  to  be  rejected  by  her." 

"I'm  sure  Faulkner  was  neither,"  said  Nevil. 
"You  know  his  romantic  nature.  He  kept  it  hidden 
in  his  public  life,  but  in  all  his  personal  relations  ho 


72  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

gave  it  full  play.  He's  a  man  who  has  lived  the 
poetry  that  another  man  would  have  written ;  and 
he 's  such  a  great  soul  that  I  think  it  rather  pleased 
him  to  be  that  one  of  the  two  who  must  always  love 
the  most,  in  every  marriage.  To  give  more  love 
than  she  gave  him,  I  think  he  was  glad  to  do  that, 
and  that  he  looked  forward  to  all  the  future  as  the 
field  for  winning  her  to  a  love  as  perfect  as  the  trust 
which  she  had  in  him.  He  used  to  talk  with  me 
about  it  before  they  were  married — you  know  how 
boyishly  simple-hearted  he  always  was;  of  course 
since  that,  not  a  syllable.  But  his  victory  came 
sooner  than  he  could  have  expected.  Shortly  after 
their  marriage — in  fact  on  their  wedding  journey  to 
Europe — she  fell  very  sick,  and  hovered  between 
life  and  death,  for  a  long  time.  He  made  himself 
her  nurse .;  he  wouldn't  allow  any  one  else  to  come 
near  her;  he  brought  her  back  to  health  and  the 
full  strength  of  her  youth.  I  don't  know  whether 
I  ought  to  repeat  a  conjecture  of  Dr.  Wingate's — it 's 
merely  a  conjecture,  and  Mrs.  Faulkner  of  course 
has  never  heard  the  slightest  hint  of  it.  But  you 
know  Faulkner  was  always  a  delicate  fellow,  with  a 
force  that  was  entirely  nervous ;  and  the  doctor 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  73 

once  said  to  me  that  he  might  have  developed  the 
tendency  he  was  born  with,  by  overtasking  himself 
in  care  of  her.  The  bending  over,  so  much,  was 
bad ;  the  lifting,  in  that  posture ;  and  then,  when 
she  left  her  bed,  he  used  to  carry  her  about  in  his 
arms,  up  and  down  stairs,  and  everywhere." 

"  Ah  !  "  sighed  my  wife,  "how  cruel  life  is  !  But 
how  beautiful,  how  grand  ! " 

"A  nature,"  I  said,  without  looking  at  her,  "  that 
might  impress  the  casual  observer  as  a  mere  sop  of 
sentiment,  is  often  capable  of  that  sort  of  devotion. 
In  fact  I  suppose  that  the  people  we  call  sentimen. 
talists  are  merely  poets  who  lack  the  artistic  faculty 
of  expression,  and  have  to  live  their  poetry,  as  you 
say,  instead  of  writing  it." 

I  spoke  to  Nevil,  but  he  replied  to  my  wife,  who 
cried  out,  "Oh,  I  hope  she'll  never  know  it!  I 
hope  she  '11  die  without  knowing  it ! " 

"She's  a  woman  who  could  bear  to  know  it,"  he 
said,  "if  any  woman  ever  could.  But  if  she  had 
known  it  she  could  not  possibly  have  lived  more 
singly  for  him  than  she  has  done  ever  since.  I  don't 
know,"  he  went  on  in  a  kind  of  muse,  "  whether  her 
devotion  was  love  in  the  usual  way.  It  has  always 


74  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

seemed  to  me  to  ignore  that,  to  leave  that  out  of  the 
question;  perhaps  to  take  that  for  granted,  as  a 
trivial  thing  that  need  hardly  be  reckoned  in  the 
large  account.  Their  not  having  children,  that,  too, 
has  kept  them  in  a  way,  like  a  j'oung  couple ;  they 
have  had  only  each  other  to  dedicate  themselves  to. 
I  don't  mean  that  they  have  not  had  higher 
interests,  spiritual  interests.  Faulkner,  you  know, 
has  always  been  a  faithful  churchman,  and 
Mrs.  Faulkner,  in  her  way — it  may  be  your  way, 
too " 

"  We  are  Unitarians/'  said  my  wife  firmly. 

Nevil  bowed  tolerantly.  "Mrs.  Faulkner  is  a 
very  religious  person:  But  one  could  not  live  with 
them,  as  I  have  done,  for  months  at  a  time,  and  now 
for  a  whole  year  past,  without  seeing  that  he  was 
first  of  all  things  with  her.  She  was  what  St.  Paul 
describes  the  wife  to  be.  She  took  thought  of  the 
things  of  this  world,  how  she  might  please  her  hus- 
band. And.  she  did  please  him.  Even  after  his 
physical  trouble  began  to  show  itself — or  to  be  dis- 
tressing— she  made  him  exquisitely  happy,  so  happy 
that  I  trembled  for  him,  knowing  that  change  must 
come  to  every  state,  and  since  nothing  could  bring 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  75 

him  more  happiness,  something  must  bring  him  less. 
And  then,  this — blight  came." 

As  he  spoke  Nevil  knit  his  fingers  together, 
and  rent  them  apart  in  an  anguish  of  pity,  of 
sympathy. 

"  And  you  can't  imagine — you  have  no  clew — no 
hint "  my  wife  began. 

"No.  No.  No.  He  keeps  the  horror,  whatever 
it  is,  wholly  to  himself.  I  think  if  he  could  tell 
somebody  he  could  escape  it.  But  he  can't !  The 
one  thing  evident  is,  that  it  somehow  refers  to  her ; 
and  so — he  can't  speak  !  "  We  walked  on  in  silence 
a  moment,  and  then  Nevil  began  again  falteringly, 
"If — if  Faulkner,  if  he  had  ever  shown  the  slightest 
question  of  her — the  least  anxiety — the  smallest 
wavering,  with  or  without  reason,  you  might  suppose 
it  was  jealousy,  in  some  suppressed  form.  But  there 
never  was  anything  of  that !  He  is  too  noble,  too 
magnanimous  for  that ;  he  honours  her  too  devoutly. 
Ah-h-h!" 

He  went  along  with  his  head  fallen,  and  his  hands 
clinging  together  behind  him.  We  were  very  near 
the  gate  of  the  old  garden.  When  he  reached  it  he 
turned  and  said  to  us,  "  I  almost  dread  to  see  them 


76  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

together ;  I  always  dread  to  see  them :  his  aversion, 
and  her  bewilderment " 

I  did  not  accuse  the  man  of  anything  wrong  in  his 
intense  feeling;  in  my  heart  I  pitied  him  as  the 
victim  of  a  situation  which  he  ought  never  to  have 
witnessed,  which  should  have  been  known  only  to 
the  two  doomed  necessarily  to  suffer  in  it.  I  wanted 
to  say  to  my  wife  that  here  was  another  instance, 
and  perhaps  the  most  odious  we  could  ever  know,  of 
the  evil  of  that  disgusting  three-cornered  domestic 
arrangement  which  we  had  both  always  so  cordially 
reprobated.  But  I  had  no  chance  for  that.  In  fact 
we  found  ourselves  in  the  presence  of  a  scene  from 
which  we  should  all  have  retired,  no  doubt,  if  we 
had  known  just  how.  Dr.  Wingate  was  standing  in 
the  arbour,  looking  down  at  Faulkner,  who  sat  in  the 
place  where  I  had  left  him.  But  now  his  wife  sat 
beside  him,  and  held  his  hand  in  her  left,  while  she 
had  drawn  his  head  over  on  her  shoulder  with  her 
right.  I  fancied,  from  the  weak  and  fallen  look  of 
his  face,  with  its  closed  eyes,  that  he  had  just 
recovered  from  one  of  those  agonies. 

The  stir  of  our  feet,  or  rather  the  cessation  of  it 
as  we  came  involuntarily  to  a  stop  in  the  grass,  roused 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  77 

the  group  in  the  arbour.  Dr.  "Wingate  and  Mrs. 
Faulkner  turned  their  heads  towards  us ;  Faulkner 
opened  his  eyes.  He  remained  looking  a  moment, 
as  if  he  did  not  see  us.  Then  his  gaze  seemed  to 
grow  and  centre  upon  Nevil.  He  flung  his  wife's 
hand  away,  and  started  suddenly  to  his  feet  and 
made  a  pace  toward  us. 

She  rose,  too,  and  "  Ah,  Douglas  ! "  she  cried  out. 

He  put  his  hand  on  her  breast  and  pushed  her 
away  with  a  look  of  fierce  rejection.  Then  he 
caught  at  his  own  heart ;  a  change,  the  change  that 
shall  come  upon  every  living  face,  came  upon  his  face. 
He  fell  back  upon  the  seat,  and  his  head  sank  for- 
ward. 


PART  SECOND.— HEEMI A. 

I. 

THE  death  of  Faulkner  precipitated  in  the  same 
compassion  all  the  doubts  and  reserves  of  its  wit- 
nesses. Perhaps  one  of  the  reasons  why  sickness 
and  death  are  in  the  world  is  that  they  humanise 
through  the  sympathies  the  nature  that  health  and 
life  imbrute.  They  link  in  the  chain  which  must 
one  day  gall  every  mortal  the  strong  and  happy 
with  the  weak  and  sorrowing,  and  unite  us  in  the 
consciousness  of  a  common  doom  if  not  the  hope  of 
a  common  redemption.  "  Some  day,"  each  of  us 
tries  to  realise  to  himself  in  their  presence,  "  I  shall 
suffer  so ;  some  day  I  shall  lie  dumb  and  cold  like 
that ; "  and  at  least  we  perceive  that  it  is  the 
mystery  of  our  origin  speaking  to  us  in  those 
groans,  in  that  silence,  of  the  mystery  of  our  des- 
tiny. We  have  no  refuge  then  but  to  forget  our- 
selves in  pity  ;  and  it  is  sorrow  and  shame  for  ever 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  79 

if  we  fail  of  it.  The  pity  of  those  who  saw  Faulkner 
die  was  not  for  him.  He  was  swiftly  past  all  that. 
In  a  moment,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  he  had 
been  changed.  The  fire  that  burned  so  fiercely,  the 
flame  that  was  the  sum  of  his  passions,  his  hates, 
his  loves  had  been  quenched  in  a  breath ;  but  his 
end  had  been  such  as  each  of  us  might  desire  for 
himself  if  he  were  at  peace  with  himself. 

A  little  wind,  cold,  keen,  stirring  the  leaves  over- 
head and  the  long  grass  underfoot,  was  coming  in 
from  the  sea ;  the  sun  was  growing  pale  before  the 
rising  fog ;  the  roar  of  the  ocean  seemed  solidly  to 
fill  the  air.  I  do  not  know  how  long  we  stood  still. 
All  of  us  knew  that  Faulkner  was  dead ;  no  one 
made  the  ghastly  pretence  that  he  had  fallen  in  a 
faint ;  but  none  of  us  recognised  the  fact  till  my 
wife,  with  a  burst  of  tears,  took  his  widow  in  her 
arms.  Then  it  was  as  if  we  had  each  wept,  and 
found  freedom  to  move,  to  speak,  to  act,  by  giving 
way  to. our  grief. 

Mrs.  March  had  never  before  had  occasion  in  our 
happy  life  to  deal  with  such  an  event,  and  now  her 
instinct  of  usefulness  surprised  me ;  or  rather  it 
afterward  surprised  me,  when  I  thought  of  it.  From 


80  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

moment  to  moment  she  knew  what  to  do,  and  she 
knew  what  to  make  me  do.  The  doctor,  whose  office 
was  with  life,  went  away ;  and  the  priest,  whose 
calling  concerned  after-life,  was  so  stunned  by  what 
had  happened,  that  he  remained  helpless  in  the 
presence  of  death.  If  it  had  not  been  for  my  wife 
and  myself,  I  hardly  know  who  would  have  grappled 
with  all  those  details  which  present  themselves  in 
such  a  situation  with  the  same  imperative  claim 
upon  us  as  eating,  drinking,  and  sleeping,  and  the 
other  commonplace  needs  of  existence.  I  was  struck 
by  their  equality  with  these;  in  their  order,  they 
came  like  anything  else. 

Just  before  dark  my  wife  sent  me  back  to  our 
children  at  Lynn.  "  Poor  little  things  !  They  will  be 
frightened  to  death  at  our  staying  so  long ;  and  you 
must  explain  to  them  as  well  as  you  can  why  I  didn't 
come  with  you.  Mrs.  Wakely  will  get  them  to  bed 
for  you  ;  and  be  sure  that  you  see  they  have  a  light 
burning  in  the  hall,  if  they  're  nervous  without  it. 
You  won't  be  needed  here.  Of  course  I  can't  leave 
her  now.  You  must  do  the  best  you  can  without  me." 

"  Yes  ;  yes,"  I  said.  "  But  how  strange,  Isabel, 
that  we  should  be  mixed  up  with  these  unhappy 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  81 

people  in  this  way  !  Do  you  remember  the  critical 
mood  in  which  we  came  here  to-day  ?  " 

"  Yes,  perhaps  we  Ve  always  been  too  critical,  and 
held  ourselves  too  much  aloof — tried  to  escape  ties." 

"  Death  won't  let  us  escape  them,  even  if  life 
will,"  I  answered,  and  for  the  first  time  I  had  a 
perception  of  the  necessary  solidarity  of  human 
affairs  from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  in  which  no 
one  can  do  or  be  anything  to  himself  alone.  "  It 
makes  very  little  difference  now  what  that  poor 
man's  taste  in  literature  and  art  was.  It  seems  a 
great  while  ago  since  we  smiled  at  him  for  it.  Was 
it  only  this  morning  ? " 

"  This  morning  ?  It  seems  a  thousand  years — in 
some  pre-existence.;J 

"  Why,  it  was  in  a  pre-existence  for  him  \  " 

"  Yes,  how  strange  that  is  ! " 


II. 


I  DID  not  see  Wingate  again  till  I  met  him  at 
our  first  dinner  in  the  fall.  Then,  as  we  sat  at  our 
corner  together,  with  our  comfortable  little  cups  of 
black  coffee  before  us,  at  a  sufficient  distance  from 
the  others,  who  had  broken  up  the  order  of  the 
table,  and  grouped  themselves  in  twos  and  threes 
for  the  good  talk  that  comes  last  at  such  a  time,  we 
began  to  speak  of  the  Faulkners.  They  had  pro- 
bably been  in  both  our  minds,  vaguely  and  vividly, 
the  whole  evening.  He  asked  me  if  I  had  heard 
anything  from  Mrs.  Faulkner  lately ;  and  I  said, 
Oh  yes;  my  wife  heard  from  her  pretty  often, 
though  irregularly ;  and  I  told  him  how,  with 
every  intention  and  prepossession  to  the  contrary, 
my  wife  had  grown  into  what  I  might  call  an  inti- 
mate friendship  with  her.  The  widow  had  gone 
back  to  the  city  where  Faulkner  and  I  had  lived 
together,  and  had  taken  up  her  life  again  in  the 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  83 

old  place,  with  the  old  surroundings  and  the  old 
associations, 

"  Then  you  were  not  especially  intimate  with  him 
when  you  lived  there  1 " 

"  No,"  I  said,  "  it  was  a  friendly  acquaintance  for 
a  while,  and  then  it  was  an  unfriendly  non-acquaint- 
ance ; "  and  I  explained  how.  "  To  tell  you  the 
truth,  I  never  cared  a  great  deal  for  him;  and  I 
wras  surprised  to  find  that  he  seemed  to  care  a  good 
deal  for  me ;  though  perhaps  what  seemed  affection 
for  me  was  only  the  appeal  for  sympathy  that  a 
dying  man  addresses  to  the  whole  earth." 

"  Perhaps,"  said  the  doctor. 

"I  hope  I  don't  appear  very  cold-hearted.  I 
liked  his  friend  the  parson  a  great  deal  better,  and 
for  no  more  reason  than  I  liked  Faulkner  less. 
Faulkner  was  a  sentimental  idealist;  he  tried  to 
live  the  rather  high-strung  literature  that  he  might 
have  written  if  his  lot  had  been  cast  in  a  literary 
community.  You  understand  ?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  I  have  known  several  such  men  in  the  West ; 
they  're  rather  characteristic  of  a  new  country." 

"  Yes ;  I  can  understand  how.    I  didn't  know  but 


84  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

you  had  been  intimate,"  said  Wingate,  in  a  half  tone 
of  disappointment. 

I  recognised  it  with  a  laugh.     "Well,  Faulkner 
was  intimate,  doctor,  if  I  wasn't.     Will  that  serve 
the  purpose  ? " 

"  I  'm  not  sure."  The  doctor  broke  off  the  ash  of 
his  cigar  on  the  edge  of  his  saucer.  "  I  should  like 
to  ask  one  thing,"  he  said. 

"  Ask  away ! " 

He  hitched  his  chair  nearer  me,  setting  it  sidewise 
of  the  table,  on  which  he  rested  his  left  arm,  and 
then  dropped  his  face  on  his  lifted  hand.  "  That 
day,  just  before  I  came,  had  he  been  telling  you  his 
dream  ? " 

II  No." 

The  doctor  now  used  a  whole  tone  of  disappoint- 
ment. "  Well,  I  'm  sorry.  I  should  have  liked  to 
talk  it  over  with  you." 

"  You  can't  be  half  so  sorry  as  I  am.  I  should 
like  immensely  to  talk  it  over.  I  always  had  a 
fancy  that  his  dream  killed  him." 

"  Oh  no !  oh  no  ! "  said  the  doctor,  with  a  smile 
at  my  unscientific  leap  to  the  conclusion. 

"  Hastened  it,  then." 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  85 

"  We  can't  say,  very  decidedly,  whether  a  death 
is  hastened  or  not — that  kind.  The  man  was  de- 
stined to  die  soon,  and  to  die  what  is  called  sud- 
denly. He  might  have  died  at  that  very  moment 
and  in  that  precise  way  if  he  had  never  had  any 
such  dream.  Undoubtedly  it  wore  upon  him.  But 
I  should  say  it  was  an  effect  rather  than  a  cause  of 
his  condition.  There 's  where  you  outsiders  are  apt 
to  make  your  mistakes  in  these  recondite  cases. 
You  want  something  dramatic — like  what  you've 
read  of — and  you  're  fond  of  supposing  that  a  man's 
trouble  of  mind  caused  his  disease,  when  it  was  his 
disease  caused  his  trouble  of  mind :  the  physical 
affected  the  moral,  and  not  the  moral  the  physical." 
"  You  mean  that  his  mind  was  clouded  1 " 
The  doctor  laughed.  "No,  I  didn't  mean  that. 
But  it 's  true,  all  the  same.  His  mind  was  clouded, 
by  the  pain  he  had  suffered,  perhaps,  and  his  dream 
came  out  of  the  cloud  in  his  mind,  If  he  had  lived, 
it  would  have  resulted  in  mania,  as  I  told  him  sub- 
stantially that  day.  But  it  was  very  curious,  its  re- 
currence and  its  unvarying  circumstantiality.  I  don't 
know  that  I  ever  knew  anything  just  like  it ;  though 
there 's  a  kind  of  similarity  in  all  these  cases." 


86  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

I  saw  that  Wingate  would  like  to  tell  me  what 
Faulkner's  dream  was ;  but  I  knew  that  he  would 
not  do  so  unless  he  could  fully  justify  the  confidence 
to  his  professional  conscience.  I  said  to  myself  that 
I  should  not  tempt  him,  but  I  tried  to  tempt  him. 
"He  told  you  how  long  he  had  been  having  his 
dream  1 " 

The  doctor  appeared  not  to  have  heard  my  ques- 
tion. "  And  you  say  she  has  gone  back  to  their  old 
place  ? " 

"  Yes,  and  to  every  circumstance  of  their  life  as 
nearly  as  possible."  I  did  not  like  his  running  away 
with  my  bait  in  that  fashion  very  well,  but  I  thought 
ifc  best  to  give  him  all  the  line  he  wanted,  and  then 
play  him  back  as  I  could.  "  You  know — but  of  course 
you  don't  know — that  his  mother  always  lived  with 
them  when  they  were  at  home — or  they  lived  with 
her;  it  was  the  old  lady's  house,  I  believe;  and 
the  widow  has  even  repeated  that  feature  of  their 
former  manage,  and  has  her  mother-in-law  with  her." 

"  And  what 's  become  of  the  parson  1 " 

"  The  parson  ?  Oh — Nevil !  Nevil  's  given  up 
his  parish  there,  and  gone  further  West — to  Kansas, 
where  he  has  charge  of  a  sort  of  mission  church — I 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  87 

don't  understand  the  mechanism  of  those  things 
very  well — and  is  doing  some  good  work.  I  believe 
he  has  ritualised  somewhat.  That  seems  to  be  the 
way  with  them  when  they  take  to  practical  Chris- 
tianity. Curious;  but  it's  so." 

"  And  she  lives  with  her  mother-in-law,"  the  doctor 
mused  aloud.  "  Property  tied  up  so  she  had  to  ? " 

"No.  I  think  not.  It  seems  to  be  quite  her 
own  choice.  I  dare  say  they  get  on  very  well. 
The  old  lady  is  romantic,  I  believe,  like  Faulkner ; 
and  probably  she 's  in  love  with  her  daughter-in-law." 

"  Well,"  said  the  doctor,  "  it  isn't  a  situation  that 
every  woman  could  reconcile  herself  to,  under  the 
best  conditions.  But  if  she  thought  she  ought  to 
do  it,  she  would  do  it.  She  has  pluck  enough.  I 
should  like  to  tell  you  one  thing,"  and  the  doctor 
hitched  his  chair  a  little  closer  as  he  said  this,  and 
again  he  broke  the  ash  of  his  cigar  off  on  his  saucer. 

He  did  not  go  on  at  once,  and,  lest  it  might  be 
for  want  of  prompting,  I  said,  "  Well  ? " 

"I*  don't  know  whether  this  is  something  your 
wife  ever  knew  about  or  not  1 "  he  began  askingly. 

"Really,  I  can't  say,"  I  answered  impatiently, 
"  till  I  know  myself." 


88  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

He  did  not  mind  mjr  impatience,  but  pulled  com- 
fortably at  his  cigar  for  a  moment  before  he  went 
on.  "  She  came  to  my  office  with  her." 

"When  they  went  to  see  you  just  before  she 
started  West  ?  I  understood  she  called  on  business." 

"  To  pay  my  bill  ?  Yes,  and  then  she  asked  to 
see  me  alone.  I  suppose  your  wife  thought  she 
wished  to  consult  me ;  and  so  did  I.  But  it  wasn't 
the  usual  kind  of  consultation ;  in  fact  she  wasn't 
the  usual  kind  of  woman !  She  didn't  lose  an 
instant ;  she  went  right  at  me.  '  Doctor,'  said  she, 
'  do  you  know  what  was  on  my  husband's  mind  1 ' 
I  like  to  deal  with  any  one  I  can  be  honest  with, 
and  I  saw  I  could  be  honest  with  her.  '  Yes,'  I  said, 
'he  told  me.'  She  caught  her  breath  a  little,  and 
then  said  she,  '  Can  you  tell  me  the  form,  the  kind 
of  trouble  it  was  ?'  *  Yes,'  I  said,  'it  was  a  dream. 
A  dream  that  kept  coming,  again  and  again,  and 
finally  had  begun  to  colour  his  waking  thoughts  and 
impressions.'  She  gave  another  gasp — I  can  see  her 
now,  just  how  she  looked  with  the  black  crape 
round  her  face,  all  pale  and  washed  out  with  weep- 
ing— and  then  she  asked,  l  Did  it  relate  to — me  ? ' 
'Yes,'  I  said,  'it  related  to  you,  Mrs.  Faulkner,' 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  89 

She  came  right  back  at  me.  'Doctor  Wingate/ 
said  she,  'is  it  something  that  he  could  ever  have 
told  me,  if  he  had  lived  ? '  I  had  to  think  a  while 
before  I  said,  '  No,  as  I  understood  his  character,  I 
don't  think  he  ever  could.'  She  came  right  back 
again — I  could  see  that  she  had  made  up  her  mind 
to  go  through  it  all  in  a  certain  way,  and  that  she 
was  ready  for  anything — and  said  she,  'I  know 
that  whatever  it  was,  he  was  always  struggling 
against  it ;  and  that  when  it  forced  itself  upon  him, 
he  did  not  believe  it  at  the  bottom  of  his  heart. 
I  have  seen  that ;  and  now  I  will  only  ask  you  one 
thing  more.  Is  it  something  that  for  his  sake — 
riot  for  mine,  remember  ! — you  wouldn't  wish  me  to 
know  1 '  'I  would  rather  you  wouldn't  know  it,  for 
his  sake,'  said  I.  '  Then/  said  she,  '  that  is  all,'  and 
she  got  up,  and  put  out  her  hand  to  me,  and  gave 
mine  a  grip  as  strong  as  a  man's,  and  went  out." 

"  Splendid ! "  I  said,  overmastering  my  own  dis- 
appointment, and  wishing  that  in  my  interest  Mrs. 
Faulkner  had  been  a  little  less  heroic. 

"  Splendid  1 "  said  Wingate.  "  It  was  super- 
human !  Or  superwoman.  Just  think  of  the 
burden  she  shouldered  for  life  !  I  don't  know  how 


90  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

much  or  how  little  she  had  divined,  but  all  the 
worse  if  she  had  divined  anything.  She  denied 
herself  the  satisfaction  of  her  curiosity,  and  left  me 
to  make  whatever  I  chose  of  her  motives.  She 
didn't  explain;  she  simply  asked  and  acted.  I 
might  suspect  this,  or  I  might  suppose  that ;  she  left 
me  free.  I  never  saw  such  nerve.  It  was  superb." 

"  Perhaps  a  little  topping,"  I  suggested. 

"Yes,  perhaps  a  little  topping,"  the  doctor  con- 
sented. "But  still,  it  was  a  toppingness  that  could 
have  consisted  only  with  the  most  perfect  con- 
science, the  most  absolute  freedom  from  self-re- 
proach in  every  particular." 

"  C'etait  magnifique,  mais  ce  ri'e'tait  pas  la  guerre, 
I  think  I  should  have  preferred  a  little  more  human 
nature  in  mine.  I  should  have  'liked  her  better  if 
she  had  gone  down  on  her  knees  to  you,  and  begged 
you  tell  her  what  it  was ;  and  when  you  had  told 
her,  if  it  inculpated  her  at  all,  would  never  have  left 
you  till  you  had  exculpated  her.  That  would  have 
been  more  like  a  woman." 

"Yes,  much  more  like  most  women,"  said  the 
doctor.  "  But  the  type  is  not  the  nation,  or  the  race, 
or  the  sex.  The  type  is  cheap,  dirt  cheap.  It's 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  91 

the  variation  from  the  type  that  is  the  character, 
the  individual,  the  valuable  and  venerable  per- 
sonality." 

"  Since  when  did  you  set  up  hero-worship,  doctor  1 
Eeally,  you  're  worse  than  my  wife.  But  I  expect 
her  to  be  worse  than  you  when  I  tell  her  this  story 
of  Mrs.  Faulkner.  I  suppose  you  will  let  me  tell 
her?" 

"  Oh  yes.  I  suppose  you  would  tell  her  whether 
I  let  you  or  not." 

"There's  always  a  danger  of  that  kind,"  I 
admitted. 

"I  wonder,"  said  Wingate,  " whether  the  eager- 
ness of  women  to  hear  things  isn't  a  natural  result 
from  the  eagerness  of  men  to  tell  them." 

"Possibly  they  may  have  spoiled  us  in  that  way. 
Do  you  think  you  were  as  eager  not  to  tell  as  Mrs. 
Faulkner  was  not  to  hear  1 " 

The  doctor  laughed  tolerantly. 


III. 


I  WAS  surprised  at  the  way  my  wife  took  the 
doctor's  story  when  I  repeated  it  to  her  the  next 
morning  at  breakfast. 

"Well,"  she  said,  "that  is  the  first  thing  I've 
ever  heard  of  Mrs.  Faulkner  that  I  don't  like." 

"  It  was  certainly  a  base  treason  to  her  sex  to  go 
back  on  its  reputation  for  curiosity  in  that  manner." 

"  Oh,  it  was  enough  like  a  woman  to  do  that — a 
certain  kind  of  woman." 

"  The  poseuse  1 " 

"  The  worse  than  poseuse.  The  kind  of  woman 
that  overtasks  her  strength,  and  breaks  down  with 
what  she 's  undertaken,  and  makes  us  all  ridiculous, 
and  discourages  us  from  trying  to  bear  what  we 
really  could  bear." 

"  Doctor  Wingate  admires  her  immensely  for  her 
courage  in  trying  it." 

"And  I  suppose  you  admire  her  too." 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  93 

"No.  When  it  comes  to  that,  I'm  all  woman— 
the  kind  of  Avoman  that  wouldn't  attempt  more  than 
she  could  perform,  unless  she  could  get  some  man  to 
carry  out  her  enterprise  for  her.  But  perhaps  she 
might  do  that." 

"  What  do  you  mean  ? " 

"  I  don't  mean  ivhat,  at  all.    I  mean  whom.    Nevil.* 

"Basil,"  said  my  wife,  "when  you  talk  that  way 
you  make  me  lose  all  respect  for  you.  No.  She 
may  be  too  exalted,  but  at  least  she  isn't  degraded." 

"  She  couldn't  very  well  be  both,"  I  admitted. 

"  And  it  shows  what  a  really  low  idea  you  have 
of  women,  my  dear.  I  'm  sorry  for  you." 

"  Bless  my  soul !  Why  do  you  object  to  her 
being  superwoman,  as  Wingate  says,  in  one  way, 
and  not  superwoman  in  another  ?  " 

"  We  both  agreed,  from  the  very  beginning,  that 
that  ridiculous  friendship  was  entirely  between  him 
and  Faulkner.  I  think  it  was  as  silly  as  it  could  be, 
and  weak,  and  sentimental  in  all  of  them.  She 
ought  to  have  put  a  stop  to  it;  but  with  him  so 
sick  as  he  was,  of  course  she  had  to  yield,  and  then 
be  subjected  to — to  anything  that  people  were  mean 
enough  to  think." 


94  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

"  Why  not  say  base  enough,  vile  enough,  grovel- 
ling enough,  crawling-in-the-mire  enough  1 " 

"Very  well,  then,  I  will  say  that.  And  I  will 
say  that  any  one  who  will  insinuate  such  a  thing  is 
as  bad — as  bad  as  Faulkner  himself." 

"  But  not  so  much  to  blame,  I  hope.  At  least  I 
didn't  bring  Nevil  into  his  family." 

"  You  admired  him  ! " 

"Yes,  if  I  may  say  it  without  further  offence,  I 
liked  him.  I  pitied  him ;  it  seemed  to  me  that  he 
was  the  chief  victim  of  Faulkner's  fondness.  He 
couldn't  get  away  without  inhumanity;  but  I  believe 
he  was  thoroughly  bored  by  the  situation.  He  felt 
it  to  be  ridiculous." 

"  And  she,  what  did  she  think  of  it  1 " 

"I  don't  believe  she  thought  of  it  at  all.  She 
was  preoccupied  with  her  husband.  He  had  to  stay 
and  simply  look  on,  and  see  her  suffer,  because  he 
couldn't  get  away.  It  was  an  odious  predicament." 

"Yes.  I  think  it  was  too,"  said  my  wife.  "And 
I  felt  sorry  for  him,  though  I  didn't  admire  him. 
And  I  must  say  that  he  escaped  from  his  false  posi- 
tion as  quickly  and  as  completely  as  possible." 

"  Ah,  I  don't  know  that  I  Ve  altogether  liked  his 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  95 

leaving  the  town.  That  looked,  if  anything,  a  little 
conscious.  I  should  have  preferred  his  staying  and 
living  it  all  down." 

"  There  was  nothing  to  live  down  ! " 

"No;  nothing." 

"  You  are  talking  so  detestably,"  said  my  wife, 
"  that  I  Ve  got  a  great  mind  not  to  tell  you  some- 
thing." 

I  folded  my  hands  in  supplication.  "Oh,  I  will 
behave  !  I  will  behave  !  Don't  keep  anything  more 
from  me,  my  dear.  Think  what  I  Ve  endured  already 
from  the  fortitude  of  Mrs.  Faulkner  ! " 

"  The  letter  came  last  night,  by  the  last  distribu- 
tion, after  you'd  gone  to  your  dinner,"  said  Mrs. 
March,  feeling  in  her  pocket  for  it,  which  was  always 
a  work  of  time  :  a  woman  has  to  rediscover  her 
pocket  whenever  she  uses  it.  "  He  's  engaged." 

"Who?" 

"  Who  1  Mr.  Nevil.  Now,  what  do  you  have  to 
say?" 

I  threw  myself  forward  in  astonishment.  "  What  J 
Already  !  Why  it  isn't  six  months  since " 

"  Basil ! "  cried  my  wife,  in  a  voice  of  such  terrible 
warning  that  I  was  silent.  I  had  to  humble  myself 


96  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

very  elaborately,  after  that.  Even  then  it  was  with 
great  hauteur  and  distance  that  she  said,  "  He 's 
engaged  to  a  young  lady  of  his  parish  out  there. 
The  letter's  from  Mrs.  Faulkner."  She  tossed  it 
across  the  table  to  me  with  a  disdain  for  my  low 
condition  that  would  have  wounded  a  less  fallen 
spirit.  But  I  was  glad  of  the  letter  on  any  terms, 
and  I  eagerly  pulled  it  open  and  flattened  it  out; 

"  Just  read  it  aloud,  please,"  commanded  my  wife, 
from  her  remote  height,  and  I  meekly  obeyed. 

"  *  DEAR  MRS.  MARCH, — You  will  be  surprised  to 
get  a  letter  from  me  so  soon  after  the  last  I  wrote ; 
but  I  have  a  piece  of  news  which  has  excited  us  all 
here  a  good  deal,  and  which  I  think  will  interest 
you  and  Mr.  March.  Mr.  Nevirhas  just  written  my 
mother,  Mrs.  Faulkner,  of  his  engagement.' 

"  What  an  astonishing  woman  ! "  I  broke  off. 
"  Why  in  the  world  didn't  she  keep  it  for  the  post- 
script, after  she  had  palavered  over  forty  or  fifty 
pages  about  nothing  ? " 

"  Because,"  said  my  wife,  "  she  isn't  an  ordinary 
woman  in  any  way.  Go  on." 

I  went  on. 

"  '  His  letter  is  rather  incoherent,  of  course.     But 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  97 

he  tells  us  she  is  very  young,  and  he  encloses  a 
photograph  to  show  us  that  she  is  pretty.  She  is 
more  than  that,  however;  she  is  a  beautiful  girl; 
but  the  photograph  does  not  paint  character,  and  so 
we  have  to  take  Mr.  Nevil's  word  for  the  fact  that 
she  is  very  good,  and  cultivated,  and  affectionate.'" 

"  Affectionate,  of  course  !  "  I  broke  off  again ;  and 
my  wife  came  down  from  her  high  horse  long  enough 
to  laugh ;  and  then  instantly  got  back  again. 

" '  He  seems  very  much  in  love,  and  we  feel  as 
happy  as  we  can  about  him  without  knowing  his 
fiancte.  He  has  been  so  long  like  a  son  to  Mrs. 
Faulkner,  that  of  course  it  is  a  little  pang  to  her, 
but  she  reconciles  herself  to  losing  him  by  thinking 
of  his  good.  I  am  thoroughly  glad,  for  I  think  his 
life  was  very  lonely,  and  that  he  longed  for  com- 
panionship. He  is  of  a  very  simple  nature — you 
cannot  always  see  it  under  the  ecclesiasticism — and 
I  think  he  has  missed  Douglas  almost  as  much  as  we 
have.  He  hints  in  his  letter  that  if  Douglas  were 
living,  and  the  old  place  here  could  welcome  him  as 
of  old,  he  could  wish  for  no  other  home.' " 

"  Look  here,  Isabel ! "  I  broke  off  again.  "  These 
seem  to  me  rather  wild  and  whirling  words.  If  Mrs. 
G 


98  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

Faulkner  mire  is  so  very  happy,  why  does  she  have 
a  little  pang  and  have  to  brace  up  by  thinking  of 
his  good  ?  And  if  Mr.  Nevil  is  so  very  ecstatic 
about  his  betrothed,  why  does  he  intimate  that  if 
the  old  home  of  his  friends  could  still  be  his,  he 
would  not  want  a  new  home  of  his  own  ? " 

"  That  is  very  weak  in  him,"  my  wife  admitted. 

"  Yes ;  let 's  hope  the  future  Mrs.  Nevil  may  never 
get  hold  of  that  letter  of  his.  She  probably  hates 
the  very  name  of  Faulkner  already." 

11  If  you  will  go  on,"  said  my  wife,  "  you  will  see 
what  Hermia  says  of  all  that." 

"  Hannah,"  I  corrected  her ;  but  I  went  on. 

"'I  suppose,' "  the  letter  ran,  " ' that  this  is  the 
last  of  Mr.  Nevil,  as  far  as  we  are  concerned.  I 
could  not  adopt  his  old  friends,  if  I  were  in  her 
place,  and  I  am  persuading  Mrs.  Faulkner  to  disap- 
pear out  of  his  life  as  promptly  and  as  voluntarily  as 
possible,  after  his  marriage.  I  know  that  this  is  one 
of  the  things  that  men  laugh  at  us  for ;  but  I  cannot 
help  it,  and  I  grieve  to  think  now  that  I  could  not 
help  showing  poor  Douglas  that  his  friends  were 
less  welcome  to  me  than  they  were  to  him.  Mrs. 
Faulkner  sees  the  matter  as  I  do  ;  but  she  will  have 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  99 

to  play  the  part  of  mother-in-law  at  least  so  far  as 
the  infare  is  concerned.  Mr.  Nevil  has  no  relations 
of  his  own  (he  is  the  most  bereft  and  orphaned  per- 
son I  ever  knew),  and  she  has  asked  him  to  bring 
his  bride  here  as  he  would  to  his  mother's  house. 
Of  course,  it  will  all  be  very  quiet ;  but  we  must  go 
through  some  social  form  of  welcome.  The  marriage 
is  to  be  very  soon — in  a  month.  I  will  write  you 
about  it.' " 

I  folded  up  the  letter  and  gave  it  back  to  Mrs. 
March. 

"  Now,  what  have  you  got  to  say  ? "  she  de- 
manded. 

"  I  ?  Oh  !  May  I  ask  why  you  didn't  tell  me 
about  this  letter  in  the  beginning,  instead  of  allow- 
ing me  to  go  on  with  my  defamatory  conjectures  1 " 

"I  wanted  to  see  you  cover  yourself  with  con- 
fusion ;  I  wished  to  give  you  a  lesson." 

"Pshaw,  Isabel!  You  know  that  you  were  so 
curious  about  what  Wingate  told  me  that  it  put  the 
letter  all  out  of  your  head." 

"  And  do  you  say  now,"  she  retorted,  quite  as  if 
she  had  got  the  better  of  me,  and  were  making  one 
triumph  follow  upon  another,  "  do  you  still  mean  to 


100  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

say  that  she  expected  to  get  him  to  help  her  bear 
the — the  shadow  of  Faulkner's  dream  ?  " 

"  Isn't  that  rather  attenuating  it  ? "  I  asked.  But 
upon  reflection  I  found  that  the  phrase  accurately 
expressed  the  case.  "  Why,  yes,  that 's  just  what  it 
is.  It 's  the  burden  of  a  shadow  !  In  spite  of 
Wingate's  scientific  reluctances,  I  believe  that  it 
crushed  poor  Faulkner ;  and  I  'm  glad  the  weight  of 
it  isn't  to  fall  upon  her  or  upon  Nevil.  Weight ! 
.Why,  Isabel,  that  letter  has  simply  removed  moun- 
tains from  my  mind  !  And  the  affair  was  really 
none  of  my  business,  either." 

"  Yes,  I  'm  glad  it 's  all  over,"  said  my  wife,  with 
a  sigh  of  relief.  "  Now  I  can  respect  her  without 
the  slightest  reservation." 

"And  isn't  it  strange,"  I  suggested,  "that  this 
kind  of  burden  she  can  bear  alone,  but  if  she  had 
divided  it  with  him  she  could  not  bear  it  ? " 

"  Yes,  it 's  strange,"  she  answered.  "  And,  as  you 
say,  this  letter  is  a  great  relief.  Dr.  Wingate  may 
account  for  it  all  on  scientific  grounds  if  he  chooses, 
and  say  that  Faulkner's  disease  caused  the  dream, 
and  not  the  dream  his  disease.  But  if  this  had  not 
happened,  if  this  engagement  did  not  give  the  lie  so 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         101 

distinctly  to  the  worst  that  we  ever  thought  when 
we  thought  our  worst  about  it,  I  never  could  have 
felt  exactly  easy.  There  would  always  have  been, 
don't  you  know,  the  misgiving  that  there  was  a 
consciousness  of  something  drawing  them  together 
during  his  life  that  frightened  them  apart  after  his 
death.  But  now  I  feel  perfectly  sure  ! " 

There  had  never  been  any  doubt  with  us  as  to  the 
nature  of  Faulkner's  dream,  though  we  could  only 
conjecture  its  form  and  facts.  Sometimes  these 
appeared  to  us  very  gross  and  palpable,  and  again 
merely  a  vaguely  accusing  horror,  a  ghastly  adum- 
bration, a  mere  sensation,  a  swiftly  vanishing  im- 
pression. We  had  talked  it  over  a  great  deal  at 
first,  and  then  it  had  faded  more  and  more  out  of 
our  minds.  We  had  our  own  cares,  our  own  con- 
cerns, which  were  naturally  first  with  us ;  and  I  feel 
that  in  giving  the  idea  of  our  preoccupation  with 
those  of  others,  however  interesting,  however  fasci- 
nating, I  am  contributing  to  one  of  those  false 
effects  of  perspective  which  have  always  annoyed 
me  in  history.  The  events  of  the  past  are  pressed 
together  in  that  retrospect,  as  if  the  past  were  en- 
tirely composed  of  events,  and  not,  like  the  present, 


102         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

of  long  intermediate  stretches  and  spaces  of  event- 
lessness,  which  the  rapidly  approaching  lines  and 
the  vanishing-point  can  give  no  hint  of.  In  spite 
of  everything,  since  the  story  only  secondarily  con- 
cerns ourselves,  we  must  appear  concerned  in  it 
alone,  though  for  that  very  reason  we  ought  to  be 
able  to  seem  what  we  really  were  :  spectators  giving 
it  a  sympathetic  and  appreciative  glance  now  and 
then,  while  we  kept  about  our  own  business. 


IV. 


FOR  a  while  we  expected  with  vivid  interest 
Mrs.  Faulkner's  account  of  the  infare,  and  her 
description  of  the  bride,  and  of  the  bridegroom  in 
his  new  relations.  Then  we  ceased  to  talk  of  it, 
and  I,  at  least,  forgot  all  about  it.  The  time  for  her 
letter  had  passed  when  it  came,  and  then  we  reckoned 
up  the  weeks  since  the  last  one  came,  and  found 
that  this  was  almost  a  month  overdue.  When  we 
had  ascertained  this  fact,  my  wife  opened  the  letter, 
and  began  to  snatch  a  phrase  from  this  page  and 
another  from  that,  turning  to  the  last  and  returning 
to  the  first,  in  that  provoking  way  women  have 
with  a  letter,  instead  of  reading  it  solidly  through 
from  beginning  to  end.  As  she  did  this  I  saw  her 
eyes  dilate,  and  she  grew  more  and  more  excited. 

"Well,  well?"  I  called  out  to  her,  when  this 
spectacle  became  intolerable. 

"  Oh,   my  dear,  my   dear ! "   she   answered,  and 


104        THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

went  on  snatching  significant  fragments  from  the 
letter. 

"What  is  it?  Doesn't  the  bride  suit?  Was 
Nevil  too  silly  about  her  ?  Were  the  dresses  from 
Worth's  ?  Or  what 's  the  matter  1 " 

"  The  engagement — the  engagement  is  off/  Nevil 
is  perfectly  killed  by  it,  and  he's  back  on  their 
hands,  down  sick,  and  they're  taking  care  of  him. 
Oh,  horrors  upon  horrors !  I  never  heard  of  any- 
thing so  dreadful !  And  the  details — well,  the 
whole  thing  is  simply  inexpressible  ! " 

"Suppose  you  give  Mrs.  Faulkner  a  chance  at 
the  inexpressible.  I  'd  rather  hear  of  the  calamity 
at  first  hands  and  in  a  mass,  than  have  it  doled  out 
to  me  piecemeal  by  a  third  person,  and  snatched 
back  at  every  mouthful."  I  put  out  my  hand  for 
the  letter,  and  after  a  certain  hesitation  my  wife 
gave  it  me. 

"  Well,  see  what  you  can  make  of  it." 

"  I  shall  make  nothing  of  it ;  I  shall  leave  that  to 
the  facts." 

These  appeared  to  be  that  the  engagement  had 
gone  on  like  other  engagements  up  to  a  certain 
point.  The  preparations  were  made;  the  dresses 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         105 

were  bought ;  the  presents  were  provided,  presum- 
ably with  the  usual  fatuity  and  reluctance;  the 
cards  were  out;  the  day  was  fixed.  All  this  had 
gone  forward  with  no  hint  of  misgiving  from  the 
young  lady.  She  seemed  excited,  Nevil  could 
remember,  but  to  seem  excited  in  such  circum- 
stances was  to  seem  natural.  Suddenly,  a  week 
before  the  day  fixed  for  the  wedding  she  discovered 
that  she  had  make  a  mistake  :  she  could  never  have 
truly  loved  him,  and  now  she  was  sure  that  she  did 
not  love  him  at  all.  She  was  not  fit  to  be  a  clergy- 
man's wife;  she  never  could  make  him  happy. 
He  must  release  her ;  that  was  the  substance  of  it ; 
but  there  were  decorative  prayers  to  be  forgiven  and 
forgotten  and  accepted  in  the  relation  of  a  friend. 
She  was  the  only  daughter  of  rich  and  vulgar 
parents,  and  her  father  added  a  secret  anguish  to 
Nevil's  open  shame  by  offering  to  make  it  right 
with  him  in  any  sum  he  would  name ;  the  million- 
aire wished  to  act  handsomely.  Nevil  could  perhaps 
have  borne  both  the  secret  anguish  and  the  open 
shame ;  but  the  Sunday  edition  of  the  leading  news- 
paper of  the  place  found  the  affair  a  legitimate  field 
of  journalistic  enterprise.  It  gave  column  after 


106        THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

column  of  imagined  and  half -imagined  detail;  it 
gave  biographical  sketches  of  what  it  called  the 
high  retracting  parties ;  it  gave  Nevil's  portrait,  the 
young  lady's  portrait,  the  portraits  of  the  young 
lady's  parents.  It  was  immensely  successful,  and  it 
drove  Nevil  out  of  town.  He  came  back  crushed 
and  broken  to  his  old  home,  and  sought  refuge  with 
his  old  friends  from  the  disgrace  of  his  wrong.  He 
would  not  see  any  one  but  the  doctor,  outside  of 
their  house;  he  was  completely  prostrated.  The 
worst  of  it  was  that  he  seemed  really  to  have  been 
in  love  with  the  girl,  whom  he  believed  to  have 
been  persuaded  by  her  parents  to  break  off  the 
match;  though  he  could  not  understand  why  they 
should  have  allowed  her  to  go  so  far.  Mrs.  Faulk- 
ner had  her  own  opinions  on  this  point,  which  she 
expressed  in  her  letter,  and  they  were  to  the  effect 
that  the  girl  was  weak  and  fickle,  but  that  she  was 
right  in  thinking  she  never  had  loved  him,  however 
wrong  she  had  been  in  once  thinking  differently. 
This  could  not  be  suggested  for  Nevil's  comfort,  and 
they  were  obliged  tacitly  to  accept  his  theory  of  the 
matter;  he  could  not  bear  to  think  slightingly  of 
her.  In  fact,  it  had  been  a  perfect  infatuation,  and 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         107 

it  had  been  all  the  more  complete  because  Nevil, 
though  past  thirty-five,  had  never  been  in  love 
before,  and  gave  himself  to  his  passion  with  the 
ardour  of  an  untouched  heart,  and  the  strength 
of  a  manhood  matured  in  the  loftiest  worship, 
and  the  most  childlike  ignorance  of  women,  and 
especially  girls.  This  was  what  Mrs.  Faulkner 
gathered  at  second-hand  from  his  talk  with  her 
mother-in-law ;  and  she  found  herself  embarrassed 
in  deciding  just  how  to  treat  the  bruised  and  broken 
man,  so  strangely  cast  upon  their  compassion.  He 
wanted  to  talk  with  her  about  his  misery,  but  it 
seemed  to  her  that  she  ought  not  to  let  him ;  and 
yet  she  could  not  well  avoid  it,  when  he  turned  to 
her  with  such  a  confident  expectation  of  her  sym- 
pathy. It  was  very  awkward  having  him  in  the 
house ;  but  they  could  not  turn  him  out  of  doors ; 
and  he  clung  to  Douglas's  mother  with  all  the  trust- 
ing helplessness  of  a  sick  son.  It  was  pathetic  to 
see  a  man  who  had  once  been  to  her  the  very  em- 
bodiment of  strong  common-sense  and  spiritual 
manliness,  so  weak  and  helpless.  The  doctor  said 
he  must  get  away  as  soon  as  he  could ;  and  he  had 
better  go  to  Europe  and  travel  about.  But  Nevil 


10S         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

was  poor;  they  could  send  him,  of  course,  and 
would  be  glad  to  do  so ;  but  he  was  sensitive  about 
money,  and  had  none  of  that  innocent  clerical  will- 
ingness to  take  it. 

The  letter  closed  rather  abruptly  with  civil  re- 
membrances to  me. 

"  Isn't  it  cruel,  dear  ?  "  my  wife  said  pleadingly, 
as  if  to  forestall  any  ironical  view  I  might  be  in- 
clined to  take  of  the  case. 

"Yes,  it  is  cruel,"  I  answered  quite  in  earnest, 
and  we  went  on  to  talk  it  over  in  all  the  lights. 
We  said,  what  a  strange  thing  it  was,  in  the  distri- 
bution of  sorrow  and  trouble,  that  this  one  should 
receive  blow  after  blow,  all  through  life,  and  that 
one  go  untouched  from  the  beginning  to  the  end. 
Any  man  would  have  thought  that  Mrs.  Faulkner 
had  certainly  had  her  share  of  suffering  in  her 
husband's  sickness  and  death,  without  having  this 
calamity  of  his  friend  laid  upon  her;  for  in  the 
mystery  of  our  human  solidarity  it  was  clear  that 
she  must  help  him  support  it.  But  apparently  God 
did  not  think  so ;  or  was  existence  all  a  miserable 
chance,  a  series  of  stupid,  blundering  accidents  1 
We  could  not  believe  that ;  for  our  very  souls'  sake, 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         109 

and  for  our  own  sanity  we  must  not.  We  who  were 
nowhere  when  the  foundations  of  the  earth  were 
laid,  and  knew  not  who  had  laid  the  measures  of  it, 
or  stretched  the  line  upon  it,  could  only  feel  that 
our  little  corner  of  cognition  afforded  no  perspective 
of  the  infinite  plan  ;  and  we  left  those  others  to 
their  place  in  it,  not  without  commiseration,  but 
certainly  without  trying  to  account  for  what  had 
happened  to  them,  or  with  any  hope  of  ever  offering 
a  justification  of  it. 


Y. 


THE  situation,  which  seemed  to  our  despondent 
philosophy  tragically  permanent,  was  of  course  only 
a  transitory  phase ;  and  we  quickly  had  news  of  a 
change.  Nevil  had  grown  better ;  he  had  been 
invited  to  resume  his  former  charge,  with  a  year's 
leave  of  absence  for  travel,  and  the  complete  re- 
covery of  his  health.  The  sort  of  indignant  tender- 
ness with  which  all  his  old  friends  had  taken  up  his 
cause  against  his  cruel  fate  had  gone  far  to  console 
and  restore  him.  Mrs.  Faulkner  spoke  of  his  joy 
in  their  affection  as  something  very  beautiful,  and 
she  dwelt  upon  the  pleasure  it  gave  them  to  see  the 
old  Nevil  coming  back  day  by  day,  in  the  old  un- 
selfish manliness.  He  had  been  troubled  in  his 
depression  by  the  consciousness  that  it  was  ignoble 
to  give  way  to  it,  and  his  courage  was  rising  with 
his  strength  to  resist.  But  still  it  was  thought  best 
for  him  to  go  abroad  and  complete  his  recovery  by 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         Ill 

an  entire  change  ;  and  he  was  going  very  soon.  He 
had  accepted  the  means  from  his  people  as  an 
advance  of  salary  for  services  which  he  expected  to 
render,  and  so  the  obstacle  of  his  poverty  and  pride 
was  got  over. 

I  cannot  say  that  it  pleased  us  greatly  to  learn 
that  Nevil  thought  of  sailing  from  Boston,  and 
hoped  to  see  us  ;  but  we  had  our  curiosity  to  satisfy, 
as  well  as  our  intangible  obligation  of  hospitality  to 
fulfil,  and  my  wife  wrote  asking  him  to  our  house 
for  such  time  as  he  should  have  between  arriving 
and  departing.  He  was  delayed  in  one  way  or  other 
so  that  he  came  in  the  morning,  and  sailed  at  noon ; 
she  did  not  meet  him  at  all,  but  I  went  over  to  tfre 
ship  in  East  Boston,  and  saw  him  off,  and  then  gave 
her  such  report  of  him  as  I  could.  I  am  afraid  it 
was  rather  vague.  I  said  he  seemed  shy,  as  if  he 
were  embarrassed  by  his  knowledge  that  I  knew  his 
story ;  he  seemed  a  little  cold ;  he  seemed  a  little 
more  clerical.  I  suppose  I  had  really  expected  him 
to  speak  with  intense  feeling  of  the  Faulkners,  and 
that  it  disappointed  me  when  he  only  mentioned 
them  in  giving  me  the  messages  they  had  sent.  I 
do  not  know  why  I  should  have  felt  repelled, 


112         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

almost  hurt  by  his  manner ;  but  I  dare  say  it 
was  because  I  had  met  him  so  full  of  a  sympathy 
which  I  could  not  express,  and  which  he  could  not 
recognise.  I  was  aware  afterward  of  having  de- 
rived my  mood  rather  from  Mrs.  Faulkner's  repre- 
sentations of  him  than  from  my  own  recollections. 
Perhaps  I  had  a  romantic  wish  to  behold  a  man 
whom  the  waters  had  passed  over,  and  who  gave 
evidence  of  what  he  had  undergone.  But  Nevil 
appeared  as  he  had  always  appeared  to  me :  pure, 
gentle,  serene;  not  broken,  not  bruised,  and  by  no 
means  prepared  for  the  compassion  which  I  was 
prepared  to  lavish  upon  him.  I  did  not  reflect  that 
tfce  intimacy  had  proceeded  much  more  rapidly  on 
my  part  than  on  his. 

He  was  in  company  with  a  wealthy  parishioner, 
and  he  presented  me  as  a  fellow- Westerner.  His 
friend  ordered  some  champagne  in  celebration  of 
this  fact  and  of  the  parting  hour,  and  we  had  it  in 
their  large  state-room,  the  captain's  room,  which  the 
parishioner  was  very  proud  of  having  secured.  He 
filled  Nevil's  glass  slowly,  so  that  he  should  lose 
nothing  in  mere  effervescence,  and  said,  "Doctor's 
orders,  you  know."  He  explained  to  me  that  for 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         113 

his  own  part  he  did  not  care  about  Europe ;  he  had 
seen  too  much  of  it ;  but  he  was  going  along  to 
watch  out  that  Nevil  took  care  of  himself. 

My  wife  was  even  less  satisfied  with  this  inter- 
view at  second-hand  than  I  was  at  first-hand.  She 
insisted  that  I  should  search  my  conscience  and  say 
whether  I  had  not  met  Nevil  with  too  great  effusion, 
which  he  might  justly  resent  as  patronising.  I 
brought  myself  in  not  guilty  of  this  crime,  and  then 
she  said  she  had  always  thought  he  was  tepid  and 
limited,  and  she  was  disposed  to  console  herself  by 
finding  in  my  rebuff,  as  she  called  it,  a  just  punish- 
ment for  my  having  liked  Nevil  so  much.  "You 
can  see  by  that  champagne  business,"  she  said, 
"  that,  after  all,  he  's  just  as  much  a  Westerner  at 
heart  as  Faulkner.  I  doubt  if  he  was  so  much  hurt 
by  that  newspaper  notoriety  of  his  broken  engage- 
ment as  he  pretended  to  be." 

I  admitted  that  he  was  a  fraud  in  every  respect, 
and  that  he  had  been  guilty  of  something  very  like 
larceny  in  depriving  her  of  a  hero.  "But,"  I  said, 
"you  have  your  heroine  left." 

"  Yes,  thank  goodness  !     She 's  a  woman  /  " 
' "  A  heroine  usually  is — unless  she 's  an  angel." 

H 


114         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

Nevil  was  gone  a  year,  and  during  this  time  the 
correspondence  between  Mrs.  Faulkner  and  Mrs. 
March,  fevered  to  an  abnormal  activity  by  recent 
events,  fell  back  into  the  state  of  correspondence  in 
health  which  tends  to  an  exchange  of  apologies  for 
not  having  written.  Mrs.  Faulkner's  letters  con- 
tained some  report  of  Nevil's  movements :  and  we 
had  got  so  used  to  his  being  abroad  that  it  seemed 
very  sudden  when  one  came  saying  that  he  had  got 
home,  perfectly  well,  and  had  gone  at  once  to  work 
in  his  parish,  with  all  his  old  energy.  She  sent 
some  newspapers  with  marked  notices  of  him ;  and 
then  it  seemed  to  me  that  we  heard  nothing  more 
from  her  till  the  next  spring,  when  a  most  joyful 
letter  burst  upon  us,  as  it  were,  with  the  announce- 
ment of  her  engagement  to  Nevil. 

I  cannot  say  exactly  what  it  was  about  this  fact 
that  shocked  us  both.  The  affair,  superficially,  was 
in  every  way  right  and  proper.  We  were  sure  that 
as  Hermia  reported  Faulkner's  mother  was  as  happy 
in  it  as  herself,  and  that  it  was  the  just  and  lawful 
recompense  of  suffering  that  Hermia  and  Nevil  had 
jointly  and  severally  undergone  for  no  wrong  or 
fault  of  theirs ;  we  ought  to  have  been  glad  for 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         115 

them;  and  yet,  somehow,  we  could  not;  somehow 
we  were  not  reconciled  to  that  comfortable  close  for 
the  most  painful  passage  of  life  we  had  ever  wit- 
nessed. Instead  of  being  the  end  of  trouble,  it 
seemed  like  the  beginning.  It  brought  up  agaiu 
with  dreadful  vividness  all  the  experiences  of  that 
day  when  Faulkner  died.  It  was  as  if  he  rose  from 
the  dead,  and  walked  the  earth  again  in  the  agony  of 
body  we  had  seen,  and  the  anguish  of  mind  we  had 
imagined.  Once  more  I  saw  him,  with  a  face  full 
of  hate,  push  her  from  him,  and  fall  back  and  gasp 
and  die. 

Hermia's  letter  came  in  the  morning ;  and  during 
the  forenoon  I  received  a  telegram  at  my  office  from 
her  asking  if  Dr.  Wingate  were  in  Boston.  I  sent 
out  and  found  that  the  doctor  was  at  home,  and 
answered  accordingly.  Then  I  sent  the  telegram  to 
my  wife,  and  hurried  away  from  the  office  rather 
early  in  the  afternoon,  to  learn  what  she  made  of  it. 

She  had  just  got  a  telegram  herself  from  Mrs. 
Faulkner,  saying  that  she  should  start  for  Boston  by 
the  eleven  o'clock  train  that  night,  and  asking  if  she 
might  come  to  our  house. 


VI. 


THE  general  change  in  Hermia,  no  less  than  a 
phase  of  her  character  which  had  never  before  shown 
itself  to  us,  struck  me  at  the  station  where  I  went 
to  meet  her  on  the  arrival  of  her  train;  and  when  I 
brought  her  home,  I  saw  that  she  affected  my  wife 
in  the  same  way.  Personally  we  had  known  her 
only  as  the  submissive  and  patient  subject  of  an 
invalid's  sick  will,  anxious  to  devote  herself  to  the 
gratification  of  his  whims.  We  remembered  her  as 
all  gentleness,  abeyance,  self-effacement,  and  then  as 
a  despair  so  quiet  that  the  wildest  grief  would  have 
been  less  pathetic  to  witness.  From  Wingate's 
report  of  her  interview  with  him  we  had  inferred  a 
strength  which  was  rather  hysterical;  and  though 
her  letters  of  the  last  two  years  had  given  us  the 
impression  of  a  clear  and  just  mind,  able  to  decide 
impartially  from  uncommon  insight,  we  had  still 
kept  our  old  idea  of  her,  and  thought  only  of  the 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         117 

self-abnegation   we   had    seen,   and   the    somewhat 
abnormal  self-assertion  of  which  we  had  heard. 

She  now  appeared  younger  than  before,  which  I 
suppose  was  an  effect  of  her  having  really  grown 
thinner ;  and  with  her  return  to  her  youthful  figure 
she  had  acquired  an  elastic  vigour  which  we  did  not 
perceive  at  once  to  be  moral  rather  than  physical. 
It  was  when  we  fairly  saw  her  face  in  the  light  of 
the  half-hour  which  we  had  with  her  before  dinner 
that  we  knew  this  was  the  spirit's  school  of  the 
body ;  and  that  underneath  her  power  over  herself 
was  a  weakness  that  had  to  be  constantly  watched 
and  disciplined.  She  was  like  an  athlete  who  knows 
the  point  in  which  lies  the  danger  of  his  failure,  and 
who  guards  and  fortifies  it.  I  am  aware  that  this 
gives  a  false  and  theatrical  complexion  to  the  simple 
truth  that  touched  and  fascinated  us ;  but  I  do  not 
know  how  otherwise  to  express  it;  and  I  am  not 
able  to  describe  as  I  would  like  the  appearance  of  a 
great  happiness  suddenly  arrested  and  held  in  check, 
which  we  both  believed  we  saw  in  her.  It  was  this, 
I  fancy,  that  kept  us  silent  with  those  congratula- 
tions upon  her  engagement  which  we  should  both 
have  felt  it  fit  to  offer.  To  tell  the  whole  truth,  we 


118         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

were  a  little  quelled  and  overawed  by  the  resolute 
strength  of  which  she  gave  the  effect,  and  we  left  it 
for  her,  if  she  would,  to  enlarge  the  circle  of  our  talk 
from  the  commonplaces  of  her  journey  East,  and  her 
ability  to  sleep  on  the  cars,  and  of  her  health,  and 
Mrs.  Faulkner's  health,  and  ours;  and  include  an 
emotional  region  where  Nevil  should  at  least  be 
named.  But  she  did  not  mention  him,  and  she  only 
departed  from  these  safe  generalities  in  asking  if  we 
could  probably  see  Dr.  Wingate  that  evening. 

I  said  that  he  had  no  office  hours  in  the  evening, 
out  I  knew  he  was  to  be  found  at  home  between 
half-past  seven  and  nine,  and  we  might  chance  it. 

"  I  must  see  him  to-night,"  she  answered  quietly, 
"  and  I  wish  you  and  Mrs.  March  would  come  with 
me.  It 's  a  matter  that  I  may  want  you  to  know 
about.  I  may  need — need  " — she  faltered  a  breath — 
"  your  help." 

"  Why,  of  course,"  said  my  wife;  and  then  I  had 
one  of  my  inspirations,  as  she  called  them. 

I  said,  "  Why  not  send  a  messenger  round  for  Dr. 
Wingate  to  come  here  ?  It  will  catch  him  at  dinner, 
and  then  we  can  make  sure  of  him,"  and  I  modestly 
evaded  the  merit  I  might  have  acquired  through  this 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         119 

suggestion,  by  going  off  to  ring  for  a  messenger,  who 
arrived,  of  course,  just  when  we  had  forgotten  him, 
and  made  my  wife  believe  it  was  the  doctor. 

We  had  a  moment  together  before  dinner  for  the 
exchange  of  impressions  and  conjectures,  and  I  made 
my  little  objections  to  the  hardship  of  being  involved 
again  in  Mrs.  Faulkner's  affairs.  "What  do  you 
suppose  she  meant  by  needing  our  help  ?  Really  I 
think  I  must  be  excused  from  being  present  at  her 
consultation  of  Dr.  Wingate !  If  she 's  going  to 
break  down  on  our  hands " 

My  wife  saw  the  parody  of  her  customary  anxieties 
in  the  presence  of  any  aspect  of  the  unexpected. 
"  Nonsense  !  It 's  nothing  of  that  kind,  poor  thing  ! 
If  it  only  were  !  But  it 's  something  that 's  on  her 
mind  —  that  Dr.  Wingate  knows  about  and  she 
doesn't.  And  now  the  time 's  come  when  she  must." 

"  Do  you  mean — the  dream  1 " 

"  Yes.  Or  something  connected  with  it.  I  saw 
it  in  an  instant.  Well,  she 's  got  her  punishment ! " 

"  Her  punishment  ?  What  in  the  world  is  she 
punished  for  1 " 

"  For  trying  to  bear  more  than  she  could.  For 
trying  not  to  know  what  she  must  know  before  she 


120         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

could  really  ever  take  another  step  in  life.  I  sup- 
pose at  that  time  she  expected  to  die.  But  she 
lived." 

"  Ah,  that 's  a  mistake  we  often  make  ! " 

"  Yes,  she  could  have  borne  it  if  nothing  else  had 
happened  after  that." 

"But  something  else  happened." 

"And  now  she  has  to  provide  for  this  world 
instead  of  the  next." 

"  Poor  mortality  ! "  I  sighed.  "  Between  the  two 
worlds,  how  its  difficulties  are  multiplied." 


VII. 


DR.  WINGATE  arrived  with  his  professional  face, 
in  which  I  fancied  a  queer  interrogation  of  mine. 
Then  I  said,  "  It's  Mrs.  Faulkner  who  wishes  to  see 
you.  You  remember  1  She 's  here  with  us." 

But  he  only  asked,  "  How  long  has  she  been  in 
town  ? "  and  he  gave  a  poke  or  two  at  his  hair  after 
taking  his  hat  off  in  the  hall,  where  I  went  out  to 
meet  him  when  I  heard  his  ring. 

"  Since  four  o'clock." 

"Oh  I" 

"  She  was  anxious  to  see  you  at  once,  and  I  made 
bold  to  send  for  you,  instead  of  taking  the  chance  of 
not  finding  you  in." 

"Oh,  that's  all  right,"  he  said,  and  he  rubbed  his 
hands  with  an  air  of  impatience  which  decided  me 
not  to  tell  him,  as  I  had  imagined  myself  doing,  of 
her  engagement  to  Nevil  by  way  of  preparation.  I 


122         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

saw  that  it  was  not  my  affair ;  and  I  decided  riot  to 
put  my  fingers  between  the  bark  and  the  tree. 

He  preceded  me  into  the  library,  where  Mrs. 
Faulkner  sat  waiting  with  my  wife,  and  I  saw  him 
make  a  special  effort  to  temper  his  bluff  directness 
with  a  kindly  deference.  It  was  she  who  was 
brusque,  and  who  put  aside  the  preliminaries  which 
he  would  have  interposed. 

"  Doctor  Wingate,  I  have  come  to  Boston  to  see 
you  in  the  hope  that  you  can  help  me.  But  now  I 
almost  think  that  no  one  can  help  me.  You  can't 
change  the  truth  ! " 

"  Rather  an  undertaking,  Mrs.  Faulkner,  I  admit," 
he  said,  with  a  smile  for  her  exaltation.  "  But  it 
depends  somewhat  upon  the  nature  of  the  truth.  I 
have  known  cases  in  which  I  could  change  the  truth 
back.  They  're  not  so  very  uncommon."  He  looked 
at  her  with  smiling  insinuation,  and  she  smiled 
pathetically  in  response. 

"  This  isn't  one  of  that  kind,"  she  said,  and  she 
had  to  make  the  effort  of  beginning  afresh.  "Do 
you  remember  when  I  came  to  you  just — just  after 
my  husband's  death ;  and  spoke  to  you  about  the 
dream  that  killed  him  ? " 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         123 

"The  dream  didn't  kill  him,"  said  Wingate. 
"But  I  remember  the  interview  you  refer  to."  He 
looked  round  at  my  wife  and  me,  and  then  at 
Hermia,  as  if  to  question  whether  it  was  really  her 
intention  that  we  should  be  present,  and  we  both 
made  an  instinctive  motion  to  rise. 

"  Don't  go,"  she  said.  "  I  wish  you  to  stay.  I 
was  afraid,  then,  to  face  it  alone,  and  now  I  wish  to 
know  what  it  was.  Oh  yes !  I  made  a  feint  of 
refusing  to  know  it  for  his  sake.  I  believed  that  I 
was  sincere,  but  I  was  a  miserable  hypocrite.  I  was 
sparing  myself,  not  him.  Now,  all  that  must  come 
to  an  end.  I  ask  you  to  tell  me  what  his  dream 
was,  and  to  tell  it  in  the  presence  of  those  who  saw 
him  suffer  from  it,  die  of  it."  Wingate  opened  his 
mouth  to  protest  again,  but  she  hurried  on.  "  You 
said  then  that  his  dream  concerned  me,  and  I  want 
them  to  judge  me  by  it,  and  I  will  judge  myself  by 
their  judgment." 

"  Keally,  Mrs.  Faulkner,"  said  Wingate,  with  the 
laugh  of  a  man  whose  perplexity  passes  any  other 
expression,  "  you  are  almost  as  bad  as  he  was ! 
Where  shall  I  begin  ?  How  much  can  you  bear  ? 
The  whole  thing  'a  very  painful !  Why  must  you 


124         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

know  it  now,  when  you've  held  out  against  it  so 
bravely,  so  wisely,  for  two  years  ? " 

"  Because,"  she  answered,  as  if  she  had  prepared 
herself  for  some  such  question,  "  I  was  going  to  take 
a  great  step,  and  I  wished  to  look  at  every  thought 
and  fact  of  my  life,  to  be  sure  that  I  was  worthy  to 
take  such  a  step.  I  got  to  thinking  of  that  dream, 
which  you  said  concerned  me ;  and  I  found  that  I 
could  have  no  peace,  no  certainty  of  the  kind  I 
wanted  till  I  knew  what  it  was.  I  must  have  been 
— there  must  have  been  something  in  me — terribly 
wrong,  terribly  bad,  to  have  inspired  such  a  dream, 
and " 

"Ah-h-h!"  the  doctor  broke  out,  "you're  as 
wild  as  he  was  in  that  reasoning,"  and  to  both  of  us 
men  her  logic  was  pitiably  childlike;  but  I  could 
see  that  for  my  wife  it  had  a  force  inappreciable  to 
us,  because  she  was  a  woman  too ;  no  doubt  she 
would  judge  Hermia  as  severely  as  she  judged  her- 
self. "What  you  say,"  the  doctor  went  on,  "is 
perfectly  monstrous,  and  I  should  not  feel  justified 
in  telling  you  anything  about  it,  unless  I  could 
bring  you  to  see  the  matter  in  a  reasonable  light. 
And,  in  the  first  place,  I  want  you  to  realise  that 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  1 25 

whatever  you  were,  or  whatever  you  were  not,  it  had 
absolutely  no  more  to  do  with  his  dream,  than  the 
character  of  an  inhabitant  of  Saturn,  if  there  is  one. 
Why,  just  consider !  You  wish  to  judge  yourself, 
and  if  possible  condemn  yourself — I  can  see  that ! — 
for  something  he  dreamed  about  you ;  and  yet  I  sup- 
pose you  dream  things  about  others — we  all  do ! — 
that  dishonour  and  defame  them,  without  thinking 
evil  of  them  for  it  ?  " 

I  laughed.  "Why,  of  course!"  but  the  two 
women  were  silent. 

My  wife  said  finally,  "  Why,  of  course,  we  don't 
blame  them  for  it ;  but  we  can't  feel  exactly  the 
same  toward  them  afterward ;  and  if  I  knew  that 
a  person  had  such  a  dream  about  me,  I  should  not 
be  comfortable  till— till " 

"  Till  you  knew  just  why  they  had  it,"  I  sug- 
gested ;  and  I  tried  to  lighten  the  situation  with 
another  laugh. 

Hermia  gave  my  wife  a  grateful  look  for  her  sym- 
pathy, quite  as  if  it  had  eased  her  of  her  self-accusal, 
instead  of  darkening  her  case  against  herself,  and 
asked  the  doctor,  "  Did  his  dream  dishonour  me — • 
defame  me — to  you  ? " 


126         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

"  No  ! "  the  doctor  cried  out.  "  I  did  not  say 
that.  His  dream  concerned  you,  and  it  distressed 
him  j  but  I  couldn't  say  that  it  was  one  to  make  me 
or  any  one  think  wrong  of  you.  Now,  won't  that 
do  !  Isn't  that  enough  ? " 

"No,"  said  Hermia,  "it  isn't  enough.  I  must  be 
judge  of  whether  I  was  guilty  of  anything  wrong, 
and  I  must  know  what  his  dream  accused  me  of. 
Why  did  it  keep  coming  and  coming  ? " 

"  How  do  you  know  it  kept  coming  and  com- 
ing?" 

"Because  I  know.  Because — because His 

mother  and  I  were  looking  over  some  things  he  had 
left — I  wished  to  do  it — letters  and  papers  ;  and  we 
found  a  scrap  that  said — that  said — that  spoke  of 
his  having  a  dream,  and  how  he  had  been  dreaming 
the  same  thing  for  months,  sometimes  every  night, 
sometimes  once  a  week.  And  I  can  remember  how 
he  would  be  very  good  to  me  for  days,  and  then 
some  morning  he  would  not  speak  to  me  or  hardly 
look  at  me ;  so  that  —  so  that  I  was  afraid  his 
mind " 

"Did  you  keep  that  scrap?"  "VVingate  inter- 
rupted. 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  1 27 

Hermia  took  it  out  of  her  pocket  where  she  must 
have  been  keeping  her  hand  upon  it,  and  gave  it 
him.  He  read  it  over,  glanced  again  at  the  charac- 
ters, and  handed  it  back  to  her. 

"If  you  needed  any  proof  of  what  I  must  say  to 
you  now,  Mrs.  Faulkner,"  he  began  very  gravely 
and  tenderly,  "  you  could  get  it  of  the  first  alienist 
Avhom  you  ghowed  that  paper.  I  suppose,  if  you  've 
been  brooding  over  this  matter,  it  will  be  a  relief, 
a  help  to  know  that  your  fears  were  right.  When 
your  husband  wrote  that  paper  he  was  not  in  his 
right  mind.  The  signs  are  simply  unmistakable; 
they  couldn't  be  counterfeited ;  there 's  insanity  in 
every  line,  in  every  word  of  that  handwriting.  It 
would  be  interesting  to  know  whether  his  hand  was 
the  same  when  he  wrote  of  other  things.  But  that's 
irrelevant.  What 's  certain  is  that  on  one  point  he 
had  a  delusion,  and  that  this  delusion  had  begun  to 
show  itself  in  the  form  of  a  dream.  Isn't  it  enough, 
now,  if  I  assure  you  that  his  dream  had  no  more 
real  significance,  no  more  rightful  implication,  than 
any  other  form  of  mania  1 " 

She  shook  her  head.  "No.  Why  should  it  per- 
sist ? " 


128         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

"  Ha-a-a  ! "  he  breathed  in  desperation.  "  Why 
should  any  mania  persist  in  a  disordered  mind  1 " 

"  It  isn't  the  same  thing  at  all." 

"  But  it  is  exactly  and  perfectly  the  same  thing ! 
It  was  the  presence  in  his  sleep  of  a  maniacal  de- 
lusion that  was  gradually  overshadowing  his  waking 
consciousness,  and  that  must  have  ended  in  his  open 
insanity  if  death  had  not  come  to  his  relief." 

She  simply  asked,  "  What  was  it  1 " 

"  What  was  it  1 "  he  echoed.  "  Well,  you  have  a 
sort  of  right  to  know ;  perhaps  you  had  better  know. 
But  I  wish — I  wish  you  had  the  strength  to  forego 
it — to  accept  my  assurance,  the  most  solemn,  the 
most  sincere  I  could  give  any  one  on  a  matter  of 
life  and  death,  that  although  his  dream  involved 
you,  it  no  mcvre  rightfully  inculpated  you  than  it  in- 
culpated me,  and  that  it  ought  to  have  no  more  con- 
sideration, no  more  influence,  in  your  life  than  the 
ravings  of  any  lunatic  that  came  to  you  from  an 
asylum  window  as  you  passed  in  the  street.  Now, 
won't  that  do  ?  Can't  you  accept  my  assurance, 
and  go  home  satisfied  ? " 

"  When  I  know  what  his  dream  was,"  she  answered. 
"I  can  never  rest  again,  now,  till  I  know  it." 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         129 

"But  there  is  this  to  be  considered,  Mrs.  Faulk- 
ner," he  urged.  "There  is  the  regard  you  have 
for  him,  his  memory.  He  was  no  more  responsible 
for  dreaming  his  dream  than  you  are  for  having 
been  the  subject  of  it.  But  you  know  how  involun- 
tary, how  helpless,  we  often  are  in  our  judgments 
of  others  •  and  I  warn  you — it 's  my  duty  to  warn 
you — that  the  danger  is  not  that  you  may  not  be 
able  to  forgive  yourself,  but  that  you  may  not  be 
able  to  forgive  him." 

"I  must  take  the  risk  of  that.  I  must  know 
everything,  now,  at  any  cost.  I  am  not  afraid  of 
being  unjust  to  him.  I  saw  him  suffer,  and  I  can 
make  every  allowance."  Wingate  was  silent,  with 
liis  head  down,  and  she  began  with  a  kind  of  gasp, 
"  Did  he — was  he  afraid  of  me  ?  I  know  how 
suspicious  people  are  who  are  affected  as  you  say  he 
was  beginning  to  be — though  I  can't  believe  it,  I 
can't  imagine  it ! — and  I  can  understand,  if  he  was  I 
Did  he  think  I  would  hurt  him,  somehow  ?  Was 
that  what  he  dreamed  ?  Did  he  dream  that  I  was 
going  to  do  him  some  harm — kill  him 1 " 

"  Oh,  no  !  no !  no  1 "  cried  Wingate,  getting  to  his 
feet.  "  Nothing  of  that  kind,  I  assure  you  ! "  He 
I 


1 30  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

spoke  with  the  relief,  as  I  fancied,  of  having  found 
out  the  worst  she  had  feared,  and  of  being  able  to 
console  her  with  something  indefinitely  less  terrible. 
I  had  often  known  my  wife  push  out  a  skirmish 
line  of  apprehension  far  beyond  the  main  body  of 
her  anxiety,  so  as  to  have  the  comfort  of  finding 
herself  within  the  utmost  she  had  imagined  of  evil  \ 
and  I  understood  the  feminine  principle  on  which 
Wingate  counted,  and  shared  his  relief. 

"  Then  what  was  it  ? "  Hermia  asked. 

"  What  was  it  ?  Nothing.  Nothing  at  all,  in  a 
manner  !  Nothing  of  the  kind  you  feared.  But  if 
you  must  know," — Wingate  glanced  at  us  where  we 
sat  spellbound  by  our  sympathy  and  interest, — 
"though  it's  ridiculously  unimportant  in  compari- 
son with  what  you've  suggested,  I  think  perhaps 
you  'd  better  hear  it  alone,  Mrs.  Faulkner." 

"  By  all  manner  of  means  !  "  I  said ;  and  my  wife 
said,  "  Yes,  indeed  ! "  as  we  rose  together. 

I  felt  from  the  first  an  odious  quality  in  the  part 
we  had  been  obliged  to  bear ;  and  I  confess  that  I 
was  beginning  to  bear  it  with  some  measure  of  re- 
sentment, in  spite  of  my  curiosity,  and  with  some 
misgiving  as  to  the  delicacy  of  the  woman  who  had 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         131 

required  our  presence  at  this  interview.  But  per- 
haps I  judged  her  too  severely.  In  some  of  the 
most  intimate  affairs  and  sentiments,  in  which 
women  are  conventionally  supposed  to  play  a  veiled 
and  hidden  part,  they  really  have  an  overt,  almost 
a  public  role,  which  nature  no  doubt  fits  them  to 
sustain,  without  violence  to  their  modesty,  without 
touching  susceptibilities  that  in  men  would  be 
intolerably  wounded. 

I  was  impatient  of  the  mechanical  effort  Hermia 
made  to  detain  my  wife,  to  whose  hand  she  clung, 
and  whom  I  had  to  draw  from  her  with  me  out  of 
the  room.  My  wife  agreed  with  me  that  we  must 
have  gone,  but  I  doubt  if  she  perfectly  thought  so ; 
and  they  both  had  an  effect  of  yielding  out  of 
regard  to  the  sensibilities  of  us  men. 


VIII. 

I  WAS  in  no  humour  to  tempt  any  confidence  from 
Wingate  when  I  hurried  out  to  the  street  door  to 
see  him  off  after  I  heard  him  come  out  of  the  library. 
My  curiosity,  such  as  I  had,  was  damped  by  a  sense 
of  the  indecency  of  knowing  in  brutal  vocables  what 
I  already  conjectured,  and  I  was  still  resentful  of 
having  been  obliged  to  enter  into  the  affair  to  the 
extent  1  had. 

Wingate  let  me  help  him  on  with  his  overcoat, 
and  he  put  his  hand  on  the  door-knob  before  he 
spoke  :  "  The  next  time  you  have  a  case  of  this  kind, 
old  fellow,  I  hope  I  shall  be  in  Europe."  He  looked 
hot  and  dry,  and  he  breathed  harder  than  even  a 
stout  man  need  after  being  helped  on  with  his  over- 
coat. "  I  made  a  mistake  in  sending  your  wife  and 
you  out  of  the  room.  It  was  no  easier  for  me,  and 
Mrs.  Faulkner  says  she  shall  tell  her  at  once,  any- 
way, and  you  might  as  well  have  had  it  at  first-hand. 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         133 

She  takes  it  worse  than  I  expected.  Good  night ! " 
lie  added  abruptly,  after  a  pause,  and  an  evident 
intention  to  say  something  else  ;  and  he  flung  him- 
self down  my  steps  and  seemed  to  rebound  into  his 
coupe,  which  was  standing  before  them. 

I  waited  the  next  turn  of  events  with  an  increasing 
sense  of  injury  at  the  hands  of  our  guest,  for  I  knew 
that  ultimately  I  must  be  drawn  upon  for  the  ner- 
vous force  which  my  wife  would  spend  in  sympathis- 
ing with  her;  and  I  had  not  yet  recognised  the 
claim  that  she  seemed  to  think  our  purely  accidental 
relations  had  established  for  her  upon  us. 

But  the  next  turn  of  events  was  apparently  to 
wait  our  motion.  I  mechanically  expected  Hermia 
to  come  out  of  the  library  where  I  was  mechanically 
impatient  to  take  my  book  and  pity  her  at  my  ease ; 
but  she  did  not  come  out,  and  I  had  to  go  and  sit 
down  in  the  parlour,  which  was  less  commodious  for 
my  compassion,  and  unusual  for  my  book.  I  sat 
there,  disconsolately  trying  to  read,  for  what  I 
thought  a  long  time,  till  my  wife  came  downstairs. 

"  Where  is  Mrs.  Faulkner  ?"  she  asked,  under  her 
breath.  I  nodded  toward  the  library.  "But  I 
thought  the  doctor  had  gone  ] " 


134        THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

"  So  he  has.  He  went  some  time  ago ;  but  he 
didn't  take  her  with  him." 

"  I  Ve  been  expecting  her  to  ask  for  me,"  said  my 
wife  vaguely.  "  I  hated  to  go  to  her.  It  would 
have  seemed  like  prying." 

"  To  a  lady  who  was  willing  to  have  the  whole 
matter,  whatever  it  was,  talked  out  before  us  both  ? 

"  That  is  true,"  said  my  wife.  "  Would  you 
knock?" 

"Perhaps  I  would  listen  at  the  key-hole  first," 
said  I,  and  I  felt  myself  growing  more  and  more 
sardonic,  for  no  reason,  except  that  I  had  such  a 
good  chance. 

My  wife  meekly  went  and  listened,  and  then, 
after  a  look  at  me,  opened  the  library  door  and  went 
in.  It  was  nearly  an  hour  before  she  rejoined  me 
in  our  own  room,  having  first  gone  with  our  guest 
to  hers,  and  stayed  with  her  there  a  little  while. 

Then  she  said,  "  Well,  Basil,  I  never  knew  any- 
thing so  sad  in  my  life.  I  don't  know  what  we  are 
going  to  do.  She  must  go  home  at  once,  and  I 
don't  see  how  she  is  ever  to  get  there.  That  is  what 
we  have  got  to  talk  over  now." 

"I  supposed  you  had  talked  it  over  already,"  I 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         135 

suggested,  still  perversely  affecting  that  cheap  cyni- 
cism. 

My  wife  took  it  for  what  it  was,  and  ignored  it. 

" Poor  stricken  creature!"  she  sighed.  "I  don't 
believe  she  had  moved  after  the  doctor  left  her  till  I 
came  in,  and  then  she  hardly  moved.  She  had  that 
awful  stony  quiet  that  people — strong  people — have, 
when  you  bring  them  bad  news.  I  could  hardly  get 
her  to  speak.  She  said  she  wanted  me  to  know 
everything,  but  she  did  not  know  how  to  tell  me, 
unless  I  asked  her ;  and  so  little  by  little,  we  got  it 
out  together.  But  I  think  I  'd  better  not  tell  you, 
dear,  just  in  so  many  words,  till  she 's  out  of  the 
house ;  do  you  ? " 

"  No ;  I  guess  I  know  pretty  well  what  you  have 
to  tell,"  I  answered,  honestly  enough,  and  without 
any  ironical  slant,  even  in  my  tone. 

My  wife  went  on.  "I'm  afraid  Dr.  Wingate 
didn't  manage  very  well :  he  had  something  finer 
than  nerves  to  deal  with.  But  I  don't  blame  him, 
poor  man,  either.  He  was  thrown  off  his  guard  by 
her  asking  if  her  husband  had  dreamed  that  she  was 
going  to  hurt  him,  and  he  thought  that  what  lie 
really  did  dream  was  so  much  less  dreadful  that  it 


136         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

would  relieve  her ;  and  1 'm  afraid  he  went  at  it  too 
lightly.  But  it  seems  that  she  had  never  imagined 
that  he  could  have  dreamed  that,  and  it  perfectly 
crushed  her.  Basil !  Don't  you  believe  there  are 
some  natures  so  innocent  that  they  have  no  suspicion 
of  suspicion,  that  they  can't  conceive  of  it  ?  Well, 
that  is  Hermia  Faulkner !  She  is  on  such  a  grand 
scale,  she  5s  so  noble  and  faithful  and  loyal,  that  she 
can't  even  understand  the  kind  of  nature  that  could 
attribute  wrong  to  her:  its  baseness,  its  cruelty. 
She's  crushed  under  the  ruin  of  her  own  ideal  of 
that  wretched  man  !  " 

"  Oh,  oh,  oh  ! "  I  cried.  "  Isn't  that  rather  a  high 
horse  you  're  on  ?  I  don't  think  poor  old  Faulkner 
was  to  blame  for  his  crazy  dream.  I  wouldn't  like 
to  shoulder  the  responsibility  for  my  dreams  !" 

"  You  are  very  different.  You  are  good"  said  my 
wife,  "  and  you  couldn't  have  such  a  dream,  if  you 
tried ;  but  if  you  go,  now,  and  think  it  was  worse 
than  it  really  was,  I  shall  hate  you.  I  should  like  to 
tell  you  just  what  it  was  :  but  you  are  such  a  fool, 
dear,"  she  added  tenderly,  "  that  you  'd  be  conscious 
the  whole  way,  and  couldn't  help  showing  it  every 
minute." 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         137 

"  The  whole  way  1  Every  minute  ?  What  do 
you  mean  1 " 

"  I  Ve  decided  that  you  must  take  Hermia 
home." 

"  Oh,  I  see  !  That  was  why  you  were  so  willing 
we  should  inquire  how  she  could  get  there.  But 
supposing  I  can't  leave  my  business  1 " 

"  But  I  know  you  can.  You  were  going  to  New 
York  with  me,  next  week,  and  we  can  give  that  up. 
There 's  nothing  else  for  it.  We  must !  It  will  give 
you  a  chance  to  see  your  old  friends  out  there,  and 
you've  simply  got  to  do  it;  that's  all."  She  added 
in  terms  expressive  of  the  only  phase  of  her  anxiety 
that  could  be  put  concretely,  and  by  no  means  re- 
presentative of  her  entire  motive.  "I  can't  have 
her  getting  sick  here  on  my  hands ;  and  there 's  no 
other  way.  Her  mother-in-law  is  too  old  to  come 
for  her,  and " 

"  We  might  telegraph  the  Reverend  James  Nevil 
to  come,"  I  suggested. 

"  Basil ! "  cried  my  wife. 

"  Oh,  it 's  no  use,  my  dear  !  I  'd  better  know  just 
what  I  'm  to  be  conscious  of." 

"  You  know  it  already ;  we  Ve  both  known  it  from 


138         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

the  beginning;  but  I  can't  tell  you.  It  isn't  her 
fault,  though  it  covers  her  with  such  cruel  shame 
that  she  can't  look  herself  in  the  face.  It 's  his  fault 
for  having  him  there  to  dream  about ;  and  it 's  HIS 
fault  for  being  there  to  be  dreamt  about."  I  knew 
that  my  wife  meant  Faulkner  by  her  less,  and  Nevil 
by  her  greater,  vehemence  of  accent.  "  I  suppose 
she  felt,  all  the  time — such  a  woman  would — that 
he  had  no  right  to  bring  his  friendship  into  their 
married  life  that  way.  She  must  have  felt  ham- 
pered and  molested  by  it ;  but  she  yielded  to  him 
because-  she  didn't  want  to  seem  petty  or  jealous. 
There 's  where  I  blame  her.  Basil !  A  woman's 
jealousy  is  God-given  !  It 's  inspired,  for  her  safety 
and  for  her  husband's.  She  ought  to  show  it." 

"  How  about  a  man's  1 " 

"  Oh,  that 's  different !  Men  have  no  inspirations. 
Jealousy 's  a  low  brutal  instinct  with  them.  Just  see 
the  difference  between  her  feeling  that  his  friend  had 
no  business  in  their  family,  and  his  making  that  very 
friend  the  object  of  his  suspicions  ! " 

"If  you  conjecture  one  fact,"  I  said,  "and  hold 
Faulkner  responsible  for  the  other,  the  difference  is 
certainly  very  much  against  him.  But,  as  I  under- 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         139 

stand  from  Dr.  Wingate,  Faulkner's  dream  fore- 
shadowed his  alienation." 

"  Oh,  don't  talk  to  me  of  Dr.  Wingate  ! "  she  cried. 
"  He  doesn't  know  anything  about  it.  No  !  It  was 
his  miserable  jealousy  that  turned  his  brain ;  it  wasn't 
his  insanity  that  caused  his  jealousy ;  and  if  you 
keep  saying  that,  Basil,  I  shall  think  you  are  trying 
to  justify  him." 

"  Bless  my  soul !  What  question  of  justification 
is  there  1 " 

"  If  he  was  not  responsible  for  his  dream,"  she 
went  on,  "  he  was  certainly,  responsible  for  the  occa- 
sion of  his  dream,  and  so  it  comes  to  the  same  thing 
at  last.  It  was  his  folly,  his  silly,  romantic  clinging 
to  a  sentiment  that  he  ought  to  have  flung  away  the 
instant  he  was  married,  which  did  all  the  harm.  A 
husband  shouldn't  have  any  friend  but  his  wife." 

"  You  will  never  get  me  to  deny  that,  my  dear,  at 
least  as  long  as  you  're  in  this  dangerous  humour." 

"I  know  I'm  ridiculous,"  she  said  nervously. 
"  But  I  do  feel  so  sorry  for  that  poor  creature  !  She 
seems  to  me  like  some  innocent  thing  caught  in  a 
-trap ;  and  she  can't  escape,  and  no  one  can  set  her 
free.  I  shall  begin  to  believe  that  there  is  such  a 


140         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

thing  as  Fate,  in  that  old  Greek  sense  :  something 
that  punishes  you  for  your  sorrows  and  for  the 
errors  of  others." 

"  There  is  certainly  something  that  does  that,"  I 
said,  "  whether  we  call  it  Fate  or  not.  We  suffer 
every  day  for  our  sorrows,  and  for  the  sins  of  men 
we  never  saw  or  even  heard  of.  There 's  solidarity 
in  that  direction,  anyway." 

"  Yes,  and  why  can't  we  feel  it  in  the  other  direc- 
tion ?  Why  can't  we  feel  that  we  're  helped,  as  well 
as  hurt  by  those  unknown  people  1  Why  aren't  we 
rewarded  for  our  happiness  ? " 

"  It 's  all  a  mystery ;  and  I  don't  know  but  we  are 
rewarded  for  our  happiness,  quite  as  much  as  we  're 
punished  for  our  misery.  Some  utterly  forgotten 
ancestral  dyspeptic  rises  from  the  dust  now  and 
then,  and  smites  me  with  his  prehistoric  indiges- 
tion. Well,  perhaps  it 's  some  other  forgotten  an- 
cestor, whose  motions  were  all  hale  and  joyous,  that 
makes  me  get  up  now  and  then  impersonally  gay 
and  happy,  and  go  through  the  day  as  if  I  had  just 
come  into  a  blessed  immortality." 

"  Ah,  those  awful  dead  !  Basil,"  she  entreated, 
".  from  this  time  on,  let 's  live  so  that  whichever  dies 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         141 

first,  the  other  won't  have  anything  to  be  remorse- 
ful for  ! " 

"  We  can't  do  that,  and  I  don't  believe  we  were 
meant  to  do  it.  We  have  to  live  together  as  if  we 
were  going  to  live  together  for  ever." 

"  Why,  we  are,  dearest !  Don't  you  think  we 
are  1 " 

"  I  can't  imagine  anything  else ;  but  I  don't  under- 
stand that  this  is  the  prospect  that  now  looks  so  dis- 
heartening for  Mrs.  Faulkner.  If  it  were  a  question 
of  her  going  on  for  ever  with  Faulkner,  it  would  be 
very  simple,  or  comparatively  simple.  In  that  case 
the  wrong  he  had  helplessly  done  her  in  his  crazy 
dream  would  only  endear  him  to  her  the  more,  for 
it  would  be  something  for  her  perpetually  to  exer- 
cise her  love  of  forgiving  upon.  But  the  difficulty 
is  that  she  now  wishes  to  go  on  living  for  ever  with 
somebody  else.  I  don't  blame  her  for  that ;  on  the 
contrary  I  think  it's  altogether  well  and  wholly 
right,  something  to  be  desired  and  praised.  But  if 
the  one  she  now  wishes  to  go  on  living  with  for  ever 
happens  to  be  the  very  person  whom  her  dead 
husband's  dream  foreboded " 

"Basil!" 


142        THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM, 

"Why,  you  see,  it  complicates  the  affair."  We 
had  touched  the  quick,  and  we  were  silent  a 
moment,  quivering  with  sympathy.  "It's  all  a 
mystery,  and  one  part  no  more  a  mystery  than 
another;  but  I  suppose  that  when  we  come  really 
to  know,  it  will  all  be  so  very,  very  simple  that  we 
shall  be  astonished.  Mrs.  Faulkner's  trouble  isn't 
about  the  future,  though;  that  has  to  be  left  to 
take  care  of  itself ;  her  trouble  is  about  the  present 
and  about  the  past.  I  haven't  the  least  idea  that 
she  ever  gave  a  thought  to  Nevil  as  long  as  her 
husband  lived,  or  for  long  after  he  died." 

"  0  Basil !  I  like  to  hear  you  say  that ! " 

"I  dare  say  you'd  like  to  say  it  yourself:  it's 
very  magnanimous.  But  I  can  understand  how 
such  a  woman  would  now  begin  to  question  whether 
she  had  not  thought  of  him,  and  would  end  by 
bringing  herself  in  guilty,  no  matter  what  the  facts 
were.  I  didn't  like  her  attempting  to  ignore  the 
tenor  of  Faulkner's  dream  when  she  went  to  talk 
with  Wingate  about  it  immediately  after  his  death. 
That  was  romantic." 

"  I  didn't  like  that  either,"  said  my  wife.  "Yes, 
it  was  romantic." 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM,         143 

"  If  she  had  made  Wingate  tell  her  then,  it  would 
have  been  all  over  with  by  this  time.  Either  she 
would  have  resented  it,  and  set  about  forgetting 
Faulkner,  and  living  a  denial  of  all  fealty  to  the 
memory  of  a  man  who  could  wrong  her  so " 

"Basil !    You  said  he  was  not  responsible  for  it ! " 

"  Or  else  she  would  have  succumbed  to  it,  and  re- 
fused ever  to  see  Nevil,  and  this  frightful  quandary 
that  she 's  got  us  all  into  never  would  have  been 
brought  about." 

My  wife  could  not  laugh  with  me  at  our  personal 
entanglement  in  Mrs.  Faulkner's  affair,  which  my 
words  reminded  her  of.  She  began  to  enlarge  upon 
the  hardship  of  it ;  and  she  was  not  reconciled  to 
it  by  my  arguments  going  to  show  how  nothing 
any  one  did  or  suffered  could  be  done  or  suffered  to 
one's-self  alone,  and  that  probably  at  that  very 
moment  some  nameless  savage  in  Central  Africa  was 
shaping  our  destiny  in  some  degree  and  was  making 
favour  with  his  fetich  for  our  disaster,  when  he 
supposed  himself  to  be  merely  invoking  protection 
against  a  raid  of  Arab  slavers.  Those  were  the  days 
of  frequent  railway  accidents,  and  she  recurred  to 
her  fixed  principle  that  I  must  never  go  a  railroad 


144         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

journey  alone,  because  it  was  necessary  that  when  I 
was  killed  on  the  train  she  and  the  children  must  be 
there  to  be  killed  with  me.  Nothing  less  than  the 
infatuation  she  had  for  Mrs.  Faulkner  would  have 
supported  her  in  the  sacrifice  of  such  a  principle, 
and  I  am  not  sure  that  even  that  would  have 
been  enough  without  the  lively  fear  of  having  Mrs. 
Faulkner  break  down  with  a  nervous  fever,  or  some- 
thing, before  we  could  get  her  out  of  the  house. 
I  recurred  to  this  consideration,  which  Isabel  had 
already  touched  upon,  and  treated  it  in  a  philo- 
sophic spirit,  as  an  instance  of  the  grotesque  and 
squalid  element  which  is  so  apt  to  mar  a  heroic 
situation,  in  order  apparently  to  keep  human  nature 
modest;  but  she  could  not  follow  me.  She  said, 
yes,  that  decided  it ;  and  she  drew  a  sigh  of  relief, 
which  she  cut  short  to  express  her  wonder  that  Dr. 
Wingate  should  have  told  Hermia  what  Faulkner's 
dream  was  when  he  knew  it  would  perfectly  kill 
her.  She  said  she  had  long  had  her  doubts  of  his 
wisdom,  and  she  now  proceeded  to  disable  it,  with 
that  confidence  in  her  ability  to  judge  him  which  all 
women  feel  in  regard  to  physicians.  At  least,  she 
said,  if  he  had  any  sort  of  intuition,  or  even  the 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         145 

smallest  grain  of  common-sense,  or  the  slightest 
delicacy,  he  would  not  have  told  her  that  the  man 
whom  the  dream  involved  was  the  very  man  she 
was  going  to  marry.  I  said  that  perhaps  Wingate 
did  not  know  she  was  going  to  marry  Nevil ;  and 
she  acknowledged  that  this  was  true,  and  began  to 
rehabilitate  him.  I  was  in  hopes  that  she  would 
not  ask  me  why  I  had  not  told  him ;  for  I  now  saw, 
or  thought  I  saw,  that  I  had  been  mistaken  in  the 
delicacy  which  had  kept  me  from  doing  it.  But  I 
was  not  to  escape  :  the  question  came,  in  due  course, 
and  all  my  struggles  to  free  myself  only  served  to 
fix  the  blame  for  the  whole  trouble  more  firmly 
upon  me.  She  said  that  now  she  saw  it  all ;  and 
that  I  need  not  go  to  Central  Africa  for  the  cause  of 
our  predicament. 

I  spent  a  troubled  night,  tormented,  whether 
sleeping  or  waking,  by  a  fantastic  exaggeration  of 
the  whole  business,  and  exasperated  by  a  keen  sense 
of  its  preposterousness.  It  seemed  to  me  intoler- 
able that  I  should  be  made  the  victim  of  it :  that 
this  gossamer  nothing,  which  might  perhaps  account- 
ably involve  the  lives  of  those  concerned  through  a 
morbid  conscience,  should  have  power  upon  me,  to 
K 


146         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

drag  me  a  thousand  miles  away  from  my  family, 
and  subject  me  to  all  the  chances  of  danger  and 
death  which  I  must  incur,  seemed  to  me  atrocious. 
I  spent  myself  in  long  imaginary  dialogues  with  my 
wife,  with  Hermia,  with  Nevil,  in  which  I  convinced 
them  to  no  effect  that  I  had  nothing  whatever  to 
do  with  the  matter,  and  would  not  have.  Faulkner 
appeared  to  me  a  demoniac  presence,  at  the  end  of 
the  lurid  perspective,  running  back  to  that  scene  in 
the  garden — implacable,  immovable,  ridiculous  like 
all  the  rest,  monstrous,  illogical,  and  no  more  to  be 
reasoned  away  than  to  be  entreated. 

I  woke  in  the  morning  with  the  clear  sense  that 
there  was  only  one  thing  for  it,  and  that  was  simply 
to  refuse  to  go  with  Mrs.  Faulkner.  I  spent  the 
forenoon  in  arranging  my  business  for  a  week's 
absence,  and  I  started  West  with  her  on  the  three 
o'clock  train. 


PART  THIRD.— NEVIL. 


IN  spite  of  my  wife's  care  that  I  should  not  be 
made  conscious  in  Mrs.  Faulkner's  presence  by 
knowing  just  the  terms  of  her  husband's  dream,  I 
must  have  been  rather  embarrassed  in  setting  off 
upon  her  homeward  journey  with  her  if  she  had 
seemed  aware  of  any  strangeness  in  it.  But  she 
seemed  aware  of  nothing.  I  could  not  help  seeing 
that  my  company,  or  the  supervision  of  some  one, 
was  essential  to  her.  She  was  like  a  person  men- 
tally benumbed  ;  all  the  currents  of  her  thought 
were  turned  so  deeply  inward,  toward  the  one 
trouble  which  engrossed  them,  that  she  appeared 
incapable  of  motion  from  herself.  She  did  what  I 
bade  her  with  a  mute  passivity,  as  if  she  were  my 
mesmeric  subject,  and  with  a  sort  of  unseeing  stare, 
like  a  sleep-walker's.  My  wife  came  with  us  to  the 
station  to  take  leave  of  her,  but  Hermia  had  parted 


148         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

with  her  at  the  moment  of  being  left  alone  with 
Dr.  Wingate  the  night  before,  and  I  think  could  not 
have  been  fully  sensible  of  any  of  us  since.  I  had  a 
fantastic  notion  of  being  like  something  in  a  dream 
to  her,  and  I  am  afraid  I  must  have  been  like  some- 
thing very  harassing,  with  the  attentions  I  was 
obliged  to  offer  her. 

I  tried  to  make  them  as  few  as  possible,  and  to 
confine  them  to  the  elemental  questions  of  eating 
and  sleeping.  These  were  very  simply  settled ;  she 
neither  ate  nor  slept  throughout  the  journey.  I 
spent  all  the  time  I  could  in  the  smoking  car ;  when 
I  came  to  her  with  the  announcement  that  at  this  or 
that  next  station  we  were  to  have  five,  or  ten,  or 
twenty  minutes  for  refreshment,  after  the  barbarous 
custom  of  the  days  before  dining-cars,  she  said  she 
wanted  nothing,  so  definitively  that  I  could  not  urge 
her;  and  in  the  morning,  after  my  nightmares  in 
my  berth,  I  found  her  sitting  in  one  corner  of  the 
section  I  had  secured  for  her,  with  every  appearance 
of  not  having  moved  from  her  place  since  she  first 
took  it  on  coming  aboard  the  car.  Her  cheek  was 
propped  on  the  palm  of  one  hand,  and  she  had  that 
blind,  straightforward  stare. 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         149 

It  was  a  strange  journey ;  and  if  our  fellow- 
passengers  made  their  conjectures  about  us,  it  must 
have  been  to  the  effect  that  I  was  in  charge  of  a 
mild  case  of  melancholia,  and  was  rather  negligent 
of  my  charge.  I  left  her  as  much  to  herself  as 
I  could,  for  I  understood  with  what  a  painful  strain 
she  would  have  to  detach  herself  from  the  trouble 
on  which  her  thoughts  were  bent,  if  I  interrupted 
them,  and  that  I  could  in  no  manner  relieve  her,  or 
help  her  to  puzzle  it  out.  Toward  the  end  of  the 
second  afternoon  we  came  to  one  of  the  last  stations 
between  us  and  our  destination,  and  then  she  started 
up  with  a  long  sigh,  and  after  a  moment  began  to 
put  together  the  little  bags  and  wraps  which  women 
travel  with. 

"  Here  we  are  at  Blue  Clay,"  I  said,  coming  up  to 
her. 

"  Yes,"  she  answered,  "  this  is  the  last  stop  the 
express  makes  before  we  get  home." 

Probably  she  had  taken  note  of  every  point  and 
incident  in  the  journey  with  that  superficial  con- 
sciousness which  is  so  active  in  times  of  trouble. 
She  now  showed  an  alertness  like  that  of  one 
awakened  from  a  refreshing  sleep,  and  I  had  an  in- 


150         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

creasing  sense  of  her  having  cast  off  the  burden  that 
had  oppressed  her.  There  was  nothing  of  levity  in 
her  apparent  relief ;  her  exaltation  was  noble  and 
dignified  as  her  dejection  had  been.  Perhaps  she 
had  not  reached  any  solution  of  her  trouble ;  per- 
haps she  had  simply  cast  it  from  her  by  a  natural 
reaction  as  we  do  when  we  have  suffered  enough, 
for  one  time,  and  was  destined  to  take  it  up  again. 
But  I  felt  that  I  could  not  be  mistaken  in  the  fact 
of  her  relief.  If  I  was  mistaken,  then  it  was  because 
she  had  a  strength  to  conceal  her  suffering  which  I 
could  not  imagine  because  she  had  so  frankly  shown 
her  suffering  before.  Her  present  behaviour  might 
have  been  a  woman's  ideal  of  the  way  she  would 
wish  to  behave  in  the  circumstances;  but  I  still 
think  Hermia  Faulkner  had  found  freedom,  at  that 
moment,  from  the  stress  of  her  preoccupation,  and 
began  to  assume  a  certain  hospitality  of  manner 
toward  me,  because  she  was  able  without  pain  to  do 
so.  She  thanked  me  with  ingenuous  sweetness  for 
coming  home  with  her,  and  expressed  a  sense  of  the 
sacrifice  which  would  have  satisfied  even  the  exact- 
ing woman  who  had  made  me  make  it.  She  asked  if 
J  had  slept  well,  as  if  I  had  just  got  up ;  and  she 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  151 

hoped  I  would  not  suffer  by  the  great  kindness 
which  Mrs.  March  and  I  had  both  shown  her,  and 
which  she  would  never  forget.  I  protested,  of 
course,  that  it  was  all  nothing,  and  said  that  I  had 
long  wished  to  revisit  the  scenes  of  my  youth,  and 
had  eagerly  seized  the  excuse  that  the  hope  of  being 
useful  to  her  gave  me  for  coming  now.  She  an- 
swered, "  Yes ;  that  is  what  Mrs.  March  told  me." 
As  we  drew  near  our  destination  she  sympathised 
with  the  interest  I  felt  in  approaching  the  place 
where  I  had  spent  the  happiest  years  of  my  young 
manhood,  and  helped  me  to  make  out  some  of  the 
landmarks  by  which  I  hoped  to  identify  the  city  I 
remembered.  But  the  new  city  was  built  all  out 
over  and  beyond  them,  and  our  approach  was  hurried 
by  finding  them  within  it,  so  that  before  I  realised 
it  the  train  was  slowing  up  in  the  grandiose  dep6t 
of  vaulted  brick  and  glass  which  replaced  the  shabby 
wooden  shed  of  former  days.  I  had  intended  to 
renew  there  the  emotions  with  which  I  parted  from 
a  friend  long  since  dead,  the  night  I  started  for 
Europe;  but  I  was  distracted  by  the  change,  as 
well  as  by  the  hurly-burly  of  arrival,  and  I  willingly 
abandoned  myself  to  the  friendly  care  of  the  black 


152         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

serving-man  of  Mrs.  Faulkner  who  was  there  to 
meet  us,  and  who  at  once  breveted  me  one  of  the 
family.  He  took  my  bag,  and  led  the  way  out  to 
Mrs.  Faulkner's  carriage,  and  put  it  in  with  her 
things  before  I  thought  to  stop  him. 

"  Oh,  I  can't  let  you  take  the  trouble  of  driving 
me  to  a  hotel,"  I  said.  "  I  will  get  a  hack  here." 

"  Why,  surely,"  she  answered,  in  a  tone  of  wounded 
expectation,  you  are  coming  to  us  1 " 

"No;  I  shall  be  here  such  a  little  while, 
and " 

"  But  that 's  all  the  more  reason  why  you  should 
be  our  guest.  My  mother  would  be  hurt  if  you 
went  anywhere  else ;  we  will  leave  you  free  to  come 
and  go  as  you  like ;  only  you  must  stay  with  us." 

It  was  useless  to  protest,  and  I  got  into  the  car- 
riage with  her. 


II. 


BOTH  then  and  afterward,  when  we  reached  the 
Faulkner  mansion,  I  was  aware  of  not  having  done 
the  Faulkners  justice  as  personages,  in  our  meeting 
at  Swampscott.  I  had  understood,  in  a  careless 
way,  that  their  occupation  of  that  villa  and  the 
style  of  their  living  in  it  meant  money ;  but  Faulk- 
ner himself  was  such  an  informal  sloven,  and  Her- 
mia  was  so  little  attributable  in  character  to  anything 
about  her,  and  the  doom  hanging  over  them  was  so 
exclusive  of  all  other  interest  in  them,  that  I  had 
not  conjectured  the  degree  of  state  from  which  they 
were  detached.  The  quiet  richness  of  the  equipage 
that  had  met  us  now  was  the  forerunner  of  a  sumptu- 
ous comfort,  far  beyond  any  expectation  of  mine,  in 
all  Mrs.  Faulkner's  belongings  and  surroundings. 
She  was  not  a  person  you  could  imagine  caring  for 
the  evidences  or  uses  of  wealth;  she  affected  you 
at  once  as  exterior  to  all  such  sordid  accidents ;  as 


154         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

capable  of  being  a  goddess  in  any  gown.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  however,  the  costliness  in  which  her 
whole  life  was  clad  was  certainly  very  great. 

I  had  forgotten  the  spacious  grounds  in  which 
Faulkner's  house  stood,  or  perhaps  I  now  noticed 
them  more  because  all  the  neighbourhood  had  been 
closely  built  up  in  the  process  of  the  city's  growth. 
In  the  heart  of  the  town  the  mansion  rose  from  the 
midst  of  ample  lawns  and  gardens,  enclosed  by  a  high 
brick  wall,  such  as  I  had  always  said  was  my  ideal 
of  stately  bounds ;  and  it  all  looked  much  older  than 
anything  at  the  East,  from  the  soft-coal  smoke  with 
which  wall  and  mansion  and  garden  trees  were 
blackened.  I  suppose  it  was  the  smell  of  this  in  the 
air,  and  the  mat  of  ivy  on  the  house  front,  that  con- 
fused my  memories  of  the  farther  past  with  more 
recent  recollections  of  England,  and  imparted  to  my 
present  sensations  the  vagueness  of  both,  as  we 
rolled  up  under  the  porte  coclikre.  I  saw  that  the 
house  must  have  been  vastly  enlarged  since  I  had 
been  there  last,  and  the  bulk  of  the  elms  that  over- 
topped it,  and  the  height  of  the  slim  white  birches 
on  the  lawn  before  it,  warned  me  how  long  ago  that 
had  been.  Within,  I  was  met  by  the  fresh,  brisk 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         155 

warmth  of  a  fire  of  hickory  limbs,  that  burnt  on 
the  wide  hall  hearth,  and  I  at  once  delivered  myself 
up  to  the  caresses  of  the  velvety  ease  in  which  all  life 
moved  there.  These  influences  are  so  subtly  corrupt- 
ing that  a  vulgar  question  formed  itself  in  my  mind, 
as  I  followed  the  servant  up  the  broad  staircase  to 
my  room,  and  I  wondered  how  much  the  invitation 
of  such  luxury  might  tempt  a  man  fagged  in  heart 
and  mind.  I  said  to  myself  that  if  I  were  Nevil,  for 
example,  and  I  were  in  love  with  the  heart  of  this 
material  bliss,  I  should  certainly  let  no  fantastic 
scruple  bar  me  from  possession.  I  cannot  exactly 
say  how  the  formulation  of  this  low  thought 
affected  me  with  a  perception  of  Hermia's  charm 
in  a  way  it  was  not  apt  to  make  its  appeal.  But 
when  I  went  down  to  dinner,  and  met  her  again, 
mellowed  to  harmony  with  all  that  softness  and  rich- 
ness by  a  dress  that  lent  itself  in  colour  and  texture 
to  her  peculiar  beauty,  I  was  abashed  by  her  youth 
and  loveliness.  I  had  till  then  thought  of  her  so 
much  as  a  mysteriously  stricken  soul,  that  I  had 
never  done  justice  to  her  as  a  woman  that  some 
favoured  man  might  be  in  love  with,  as  men  are 
with  women,  and  might  marry.  When  I  now 


156         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

realised  this  I  was  ashamed  of  realising  it,  and  was 
afraid  of  betraying  it  somehow,  by  some  levity,  some 
want  of  conformity  in  mood  or  manner  to  what  I 
knew  of  her.  I  suffered  myself  to  wonder  if  Nevil 
ever  had  this  unruly  sense  of  her,  against  which 
something  sadly  reproachful  in  her  beauty  itself 
seemed  to  protest,  and  which  I  feel  that  I  have  given 
undue  import  and  fixity  in  putting  it  into  words. 
I  suppose  it  was  all  from  seeing  her  for  the  first 
time  in  colours,  and  from  perceiving  with  a  distinct- 
ness unfelt  before  that  she  was  in  the  perfect 
splendor  of  a  most  regal  womanhood.  Something 
perversely  comic  mixed  with  my  remorse,  when  I 
met  her  eye  with  these  thoughts  in  my  mind,  and 
fancied  a  swift  query  there  as  to  the  impression  I 
had  of  her.  I  wished  to  tease,  to  mystify  her,  to 
keep  her  between  laughing  and  crying,  as  a  naughty 
boy  will  with  some  little  girl  whom  he  pretends  to 
have  found  something  wrong  about.  I  have  since 
thought  she  may  have  been  questioning  whether  I 
read  in  her  costume  any  conclusion  as  to  the  matter 
pending  in  her  mind ;  and  that  she  meant  to  express 
by  this  assertion  of  her  right  to  be  beautiful  the 
decision  which  she  had  reached.  If  this  was  so,  she 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         157 

had  chosen  a  means  too  finely,  too  purely  feminine  ; 
my  wife  might  have  understood  her,  but  I  certainly 
did  not. 

The  dowager  Mrs.  Faulkner  was  there  with  her 
in  the  drawing-room,  a  plain  old  lady,  whom  I  could 
see  her  son  had  looked  like,  in  a  rich  old  lady's  silk. 
She  welcomed  me  with  a  motherly  cordiality,  and 
put  me  on  that  footing  of  intimacy  with  Faulkner  in 
the  past  which  I  was  always  wishing  in  vain  to 
refuse.  I  perceived  that  I  had  for  her  only  the 
personality  that  he  had  given  me;  she  could  not 
detach  me  from  the  period  of  my  first  acquaintance 
with  him.  She  began  at  once  to  talk  literature  with 
me,  as  if  that  were  the  practical  interest  of  my  life  ; 
and  I  found  her  far  better  read,  and  of  a  far  more 
modern  taste,  than  her  son  had  been.  She  was  one 
of  those  old  ladies  who  perhaps  reach  their  perfec- 
tion a  little  away  from  the  centres  of  thought,  or 
rather  of  talk,  and  in  some  such  subordinate  city  as 
that  where  her  life  had  been  passed.  She  had  kept 
the  keen  relish  for  books  which  seems  to  dull  where 
books  are  written  and  printed,  and  she  had  vivid 
opinions  about  them  which  were  not  faded  by  con- 
stant wear.  I  found  also  that  she  knew  personally  a 


158        THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

great  many  of  the  authors  we  discussed  :  it  was  still 
in  the  palmy  days  of  lecturing,  and  the  Faulkners 
had  made  their  house  the  hospitable  sojourn  of  every 
writer  who  had  come  to  the  place  to  read  his  essay 
or  poem.  She  told  me  that  I  had  the  authors'  seat 
at  her  table,  and  that  the  very  chair  I  then  sat  in 
had  been  occupied  by  Emerson,  Curtis,  Wendell 
Phillips,  Saxe,  Dr.  Holland,  Bayard  Taylor,  Mark 
Twain,  and  I  do  not  know  who  else. 

I  confess  that  she  fatigued  me  a  little  with  all  that 
enthusiasm,  but  except  for  her  passion  for  authorship 
in  books  and  out  of  them,  I  found  that  I  must  revise 
my  impression  that  she  was  a  romantic  person.  Her 
relations  with  her  daughter-in-law  had  nothing, 
certainly,  of  romantic  insubstantiality ;  they  were 
of  the  solidest  and  simplest  affection,  founded  ap- 
parently upon  a  confidence  as  perfect  as  could  have 
existed  between  them  if  Hermia  had  been  her  own 
child.  She  gave  her  the  head  of  the  table,  and  she 
let  herself  be  ruled  by  her  in  many  little  things  in 
which  old  ladies  are  apt  to  be  rebellious  to  younger 
women.  She  seemed  to  wish  only  to  lead  the  talk, 
but  she  deferred  to  Hermia  in  several  questions  of 
fact  as  well  as  taste,  and  though  she  always  spoke  to 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         159 

her  as  "  child,"  it  was  evidently  with  no  wish  to 
depose  or  minify  her.  On  her  part  Hermia,  without 
seeming  to  do  so,  showed  herself  watchful  of  Mrs. 
Faulkner's  comfort  and  pleasure  at  every  moment, 
and  evidently  returned  her  liking  in  all  its  cordiality. 
There  was  no  manner  of  jealousy  between  them,  per- 
haps because  Mrs.  Faulkner  could  never  have  been 
a  beauty,  and  could  not  even  be  retrospectively 
envious  of  Hermia's  magnificence,  and  partly  also 
because  they  were  temperaments  that  in  being  wholly 
opposite  did  not  in  the  least  wear  upon  each  other. 

This  at  least  was  my  rapid  formulation  of  the 
case.  The  dinner  was  exquisite,  and  Mrs.  Faulkner 
praised  it  with  impartial  jollity,  assuring  me  that  I 
should  have  had  no  such  dinner  if  she  had  been  in 
authority,  but  that  Hermia's  genius  for  house-keep- 
ing was  such  that  its  inspiration  ruled  even  in  her 
absence.  As  for  herself,  she  did  not  know  what  she 
was  eating. 

"  Nor,  I  hope,  how  much  I  am,"  I  said. 

In  fact  I  felt  quite  torpid  after  dinner.  As  we 
sat  before  the  fire  I  began  to  have  long  dreams  be- 
tween the  syllables  of  the  words  I  heard  spoken,  and 
I  had  a  passage  of  conversation  with  my  wife  and 


160         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

Faulkner,  in  which  it  was  all  pleasantly  arranged  in 
regard  to  Nevil,  while  I  was  dimly  aware  of  Mrs. 
Faulkner's  asking  me  whether  I  thought  George 
Eliot  would  Hve  as  a  poet. 

I  do  not  know  whether  I  perceptibly  disgraced 
myself  or  not.  But  we  made  a  short  evening,  and 
a  little  after  nine  o'clock  I  acquiesced,  with  an 
alacrity  for  which  I  am  sure  my  wife  would  never 
have  forgiven  me,  in  Hermia's  suggestion  that  I 
must  be  very  tired,  and  would  like  to  go  to  bed. 


III. 


IT  was  certainly  a  most  anomalous  situation,  and 
I  woke  with  the  brilliant  idea  that  for  my  own  part 
in  it  the  whole  thing  was  to  take  it  as  naturally  as 
possible ;  which  was  probably  reflected  into  my 
waking  thought  from  some  otherwise  wholly  van- 
ished dream. 

I  found  it  early,  as  to  the  daylight,  but  in  thafc 
smoke-dimmed  November  air  it  might  very  well  be 
still  rather  dark  at  seven  o'clock.  I  went  out  for  a 
breath  of  the  pensive  confusion  which  I  found  still 
persisted  in  it,  and  inhaled  my  glad  youth  and  my 
first  joy  of  travel  in  the  odour  of  those  bituminous 
fumes.  The  grass  was  still  brightly  green  on  the 
lawn  ] 

"  And  parting  summer  lingering  blooms  delayed  " 

in  the  garden  which  stretched  with  box-bordered 

walks  and  grape-vined  trellises  to  the  wall  at  one 

side  of  the  house.      The  leaves  had  dropped  from 

L 


162        THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

the  trees,  and  I  picked  up  from  the  fallen  foliage, 
soft  and  dank  under  my  feet,  a  black  walnut,  pun- 
gently  aromatic,  and  redolent  of  my  boyhood.  At 
the  same  time  a  faint  scent  rose  from  the  box,  and 
transported  me  to  that  old  neglected  garden  by  the 
sea  where  I  saw  Faulkner  die.  A  thrill  of  immense 
pity  for  him  pierced  my  heart.  I  thought  with 
what  a  passion  of  tenderness  for  that  woman  he 
must  have  planned  this  house,  from  which  he  was 
now  in  eternal  exile,  and  her  willingness  to  forget 
him  in  her  love  for  another  seemed  monstrous.  It 
was  hard  to  be  a  philosophical  spectator ;  I  found 
myself  taking  the  unfriended  side  of  the  dead. 

In  the  house,  when  I  returned  to  it,  I  was  met  by 
Faulkner's  mother,  before  that  cheerful  hall  fire. 
She  put  aside  the  damp  morning  paper  which  she 
had  just  opened  to  dry  in  the  heat,  and  gave  me  her 
old,  soft  hand. 

"  Do  you  find  many  familiar  points  about  the 
place  1 "  she  asked. 

"  No ;  I  'm  afraid  I  hadn't  kept  any  distinct  re- 
membrance of  it.  At  least,  it 's  all  very  strange." 

"  You  would  recognise  my  son's  room,  I  suppose," 
she  said,  turning  and  leading  the  way  down  a  cor- 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         163 

ridor  that  branched  away  from  the  hall.  "  The  old 
house  is  all  here ;  the  new  one  was  built  round  it ; 
and  we  Ve  kept  poor  Douglas's  den,  as  he  used  to 
call  it,  just  as  it  was." 

I  thought  it  an  odd  fancy  she  should  wish  me  to 
visit  the  place  with  her,  but  I  concluded  that  per- 
haps she  wished  to  tell  her  daughter  I  had  already 
seen  it,  if  she  should  ask.  At  any  rate,  I  had  no 
comment  to  make  even  in  my  own  mind  :  we  all 
deal  as  we  best  can  with  our  bereavements,  and  it  is 
but  lamely,  helplessly  at  the  best. 

We  had  to  pass  through  the  library,  and  I  recog- 
nised some  of  the  rare  editions  and  large  paper 
copies  with  which  poor  Faulkner  had  so  quickly 
surfeited  me ;  and  there  were  two  or  three  of  his 
ridiculous  Madonnas  hung  about,  cold  engravings 
with  wide  mats  in  frigid  frames  of  black,  after  a 
belated  taste  for  the  quiet  in  art.  They  made  me 
shiver,  and  in  the  room  which  we  entered  from  the 
library  that  night,  and  found  Nevil  smoking  there, 
we  were  now  met  by  a  ghostly  scent  of  tobacco,  as 
if  from  the  cigars  that  Faulkner  kept  on  nervous- 
ly consuming  one  after  another,  as  we  had  talked. 
It  brought  back  my  youth,  which  seemed  haunting 


164        THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

the  city  everywhere  ;  not  my  youth  bright  and  warm 
as  we  find  it  imagined  in  the  lying  books,  but  cold 
and  dead,  the  spectre  that  really  revisits  after-years, 
and  makes  us  glad  it  is  dead. 

The  stout-hearted  old  lady  pushed  back  a  blind 
that  had  swung  to  across  an  open  casement,  and  let 
in  the  morning  sun.  "  We  keep  it  aired  every  day ; 
I  can't  bear  to  let  it  seem  to  be  getting  out  of  use. 
Hermia  feels  as  I  do  about  it,  and  she  would  have 
asked  you  to  come  here  and  smoke  and  write  your 
letters ;  but  I  thought  perhaps  I  had  better  bring 
you  first.  She  was  very  tired,  and  we  sat  up  late, 
talking.  Will  you  sit  down  1  Breakfast  will  not  be 
ready  till  half-past  eight." 

I  obeyed,  and  she  sat  down  too.  I  wondered 
what  could  be  her  motive  in  wishing  to  keep  me 
there,  and  what  her  theory  was  in  bringing  up  the 
last  matter  that  I  should  have  supposed  she  would 
like  to  talk  of  in  that  place.  Perhaps  she  spoke 
from  that  absence  of  sensation  in  regard  to  certain 
interests  of  life  which  we  imagine  callousness  in  the 
old  :  those  interests  are  simply  extinct  in  them,  and 
they  are  no  harder  than  the  young  who  still  feel 
them  so  keenly.  Perhaps  she  still  felt  them,  and 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         165 

meant  to  make  a  supreme  renunciation  of  the  past 
on  the  spot  hallowed  to  her  by  the  strongest  associa- 
tions. I  do  not  know ;  I  only  know  that  she  began 
to  speak,  and  to  speak  with  a  plainness  that  I  have 
no  right  to  call  obtuseness. 


IV. 


"  MR.  MARCH,  Hermia  has  been  telling  me  of  what 
she  learnt  in  Boston  from  Dr.  Wingate." 

"Yes?"  I  said  feebly. 

"  It  was  my  wish  that  slie  should  go  there,  and 
see  him,  and  find  out  to  the  last  word  all  that  he 
remembered  of  Douglas.  She  would  not  have  gone 
without  my  wish ;  but  it  was  her  wish,  too ;  or 
rather  it  was  the  necessity  of  both  of  us.  After  we 
found  that  paper  of  Douglas's,  which  she  took  with 
her,  we  could  neither  of  us  rest  till  we  knew  every- 
thing." 

I  nodded,  for  want  of  wit  to  say  anything  relevant, 
and  she  went  on. 

"  I  wish  to  say  at  once  that  I  thoroughly  approve 
of  Hermia's  engagement  to  Mr.  Nevil,  and  that 
nothing  she  heard  from  Dr.  Wingate  has  changed 
me  in  the  least  about  it.  At  first,  the  engagement 
was  rather  a  shock  to  me;  but  not  more  so  than 
his  offer  was  to  Hermia;  perhaps  not  so  much." 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         167 

There  was  no  faltering  in  Mrs.  Faulkner's  voice,  but 
a  tear  ran  down  her  cheek.  "  We  are  very  strangely 
made,  Mr.  March.  It  is  twenty  years  since  my 
husband  died,  and  I  have  never  once  thought  of 
marrying  again;  but  I  cannot  honestly  say  that  I 
would  not  have  married  if  I  had  met  any  one  I 
loved.  I  know  that  such  a  thing  was  possible, 
though  I  did  not  know  it  then.  At  first,  after  we 
have  lost  some  one  who  is  very  dear  to  us,  it  seems  as 
if  henceforward  we  must  live  only  for  the  dead  :  to 
atone  to  them  for  the  default  of  our  lives  with  them, 
and  to  make  reparation  for  unkindness.  That  is  the 
way  I  felt  when  my  husband  died.  I  wanted  to  keep 
myself  in  communion  with  him.  But  that  was  not 
possible.  Nature  soon  teaches  us  better  than  that ; 
she  shows  us  that  as  long  as  we  live  upon  the  earth 
we  cannot  live  at  all  for  the  dead :  we  can  live  only 
for  the  living." 

"  Yes,"  I  said.  "  I  never  thought  of  it  before, 
though." 

"  Have  you  ever  known  any  deep  bereavement  ? " 

"  No ;  I  have  been  very  fortunate." 

•"  If  you  ever  have  such  a  sorrow,  you  will  under- 
stand what  I  say  as  you  never  can  without  it.  I 


168         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

had  learned  the  truth  when  my  son  died,  and  I  tried 
to  make  my  daughter  accept  it  from  me.  But  she 
could  not ;  she  could  only  accept  it  from  experience. 
He  had  been  her  whole  life  so  long  that  she  did  not 
wish  to  live  any  other.  No  woman  ever  devoted 
herself  more  utterly  than  she  did  to  him.  She  could 
not  realise  that  as  long  as  she  remained  in  the  world 
she  could  not  devote  herself  to  him  any  more ;  that 
all  that  had  come  absolutely  to  an  end.  The  truth 
was  the  harder  for  her  to  learn  '  by  reason  of  great 
strength.'  She  thought  that  for  his  sake  she  could 
bear  not  to  know  what  was  the  trouble  of  mind  in 
which  he  died.  That  was  a  mistake." 

"  My  wife  and  I  thought  so,  when  we  heard  of  it. 
Dr.  "Wingate  told  me  about  it.  But  it  was  very 
heroic." 

"  It  was  heroic,  yes ;  but  it  was  impossible.  I 
knew  it  at  the  time.  If  she  had  made  Dr.  Wingate 
tell  her  then,  she  could  have  thought  it  out  and 
lived  it  down ;  or,  if  she  couldn't  have  done  that, 
then  at  least  what  makes  it  so  cruel  now  would 
never  have  happened." 

"Yes,  I  see,"  I  said,  in  the  pause  which  Mrs. 
Faulkner  made. 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.          169 

"  I  have  always  been  willing,"  she  resumed,  "  and 
sometimes  I  have  been  anxious,  that  Hermia  should 
many  again.  Marriage  is  for  this  world.  We  are 
told  that  by  Christ  himself,  and  we  know  it  instinc- 
tively. Death  does  dissolve  it  inexorably ;  and 
although  I  believe,  as  Swedenborg  says  in  one  of 
his  strange  books,  that  one  man  and  one  woman 
shall  live  together  to  all  eternity  in  a  union  that 
will  make  them  one  personality,  still  I  believe  that, 
as  he  says,  that  union  may  or  may  not  begin  on 
earth,  and  that  it  will  be  formed  hereafter  without 
regard  to  earthly  ties.  I  was  not  a  fool,  and  I  saw 
that  Hermia  was  young  and  attractive,  and  I  ex- 
pected her  to  have  the  feelings  of  other  young  and 
attractive  women." 

There  was  a  mixture  of  mysticism  and  matter-of- 
fact  in  this  dear  old  lady's  formulation  of  the  case 
which  was  bringing  me  near  the  verge  of  a  smile, 
but  I  said  gravely,  "  Of  course." 

"  But  she  never  showed  the  least  sign  of  it ;  and 
when,  after  Mr.  Nevil  came  back  from  Europe,  their 
engagement  took  place,  I  was  entirely  unprepared 
for  such  a  thing.  He  had  been  with  us  a  great  deal. 
We  nursed  him  through  a  long  sickness  after  that 


170         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

broken  engagement  of  his  in  Nebraska,  and  he  was 
quite  like  one  of  ourselves.  In  fact,  his  friendship 
with  Douglas  dates  back  so  far — to  the  very  be- 
ginning of  their  college  days — that  I  can  hardly  re- 
member when  James  did  not  seem  like  a  son  to  me. 
You  mustn't  suppose,  though,  that  I  ever  objected  to 
the  engagement,  or  do  now.  I  highly  approve  of  it 
But  I  had  always  fancied  that  the  very  intimacy 
that  Hermia  was  thrown  into  with  him  was  un- 
favourable to  her  forming  any  fancy  for  him.  In 
fact,  she  has  always  been  rather  critical  of  him ;  and 
I  know  that  she  rather  dislikes  clergymen — as  men, 
I  mean.  She  is  a  religious  person  in  her  own  way ; 
I  Ve  nothing  to  say  against  her  way.  So,  as  I  say, 
I  was  sufficiently  astonished;  but  that  is  neither 
here  nor  there.  I  gave  my  cordial  consent  at  once. 
James  has  not  had  a  very  joyous  life  ;  he  has  made 
it  rather  hard  for  himself,  and  I  suppose  that  the 
idea  of  putting  some  brightness  into  it  may  have 

first  made  Hermia But  at  any  rate  they  were 

very  happy  together ;  and  though  Hermia  had  her 
morbid  feelings  occasionally  about  Douglas,  and 
seemed  to  think  it  was  wicked  to  turn  from  him 
to  anybody  else,  and  a  kind  of  treason,  still,  she 
always  listened  to  me  about  it,  and  would  be  reason- 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  171 

able  when  I  showed  her  how  foolish  she  was.  I 
wanted  her  to  put  his  things  away,  and  there  I  sup- 
pose I  made  a  little  mistake,  especially  the  things 
connected  with  his  last  days — writings  and  letters, 
and  odd  scraps,  that  she  was  always  intending  to 
look  over,  and  never  quite  had  the  strength  for. 
She  consented  to  burn  them ;  but  she  could  not 
bring  herself  to  do  that  without  reading  them ;  and 
so  we  found  that  paper  which  she  carried  to  Dr. 
Wingate.  Do  you  know  what  was  in  it  ? " 

"  No,  certainly.  She  showed  it  to  him  in  our 
presence,  and  I  think  she  was  willing  we  should 
know,  but  he  decided  very  wisely  that  he  would 
rather  speak  with  her  alone  about  it." 

My  feeling  did  not  seem  to  make  much  impres- 
sion upon  Mrs.  Faulkner.  "  I  suppose  you  do  know, 
Mr.  March,  that  my  son  was  not  quite  in  his  right 
mind  when  he  died  ? " 

I  admitted  that  I  had  some  misgivings  to  that 
effect. 

"  I  don't  understand,"  she  went  on,  "  why  we 
should  be  so  ashamed  to  acknowledge  that  any  one 
connected  with  us  is  not  perfectly  sane.  As  if  the 
world  were  not  full  of  crazy  people  !  As  if  we  were 
not  all  a  little  crazy  on  some  point  or  other  !  The 


172        THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

pain  he  suffered  had  affected  his  mind;  it's  very 
common,  I  believe;  and  he  had  a  delusion  that 
showed  itself  in  the  form  of  a  dream,  but  that 
would  have  been  sure,  if  he  lived,  to  have  broken 
out  in  a  mania." 

She  stopped,  as  if  she  expected  me  to  prompt  her 
or  agree  with  her,  and  I  said,  "  Yes,  Dr.  Wingate 
told  me  something  of  the  kind." 

"  But  he  gave  you  no  hint  of  what  the  dream — 
the  delusion — was  ?  " 

"  None." 

"  We  used  often  to  try  to  think  what  it  could 
be.  It  seemed  to  give  him  a  dislike  or  distrust  for 
Hermia ;  and  we  thought — we  hardly  ever  spoke  of 
it  openly ;  now  we  must  handle  it  without  shrink- 
ing, no  matter  what  pain  it  gives  1  We  thought — 
that  it  involved  some  fear  of  violence  from  her. 
People  whose  minds  are  beginning  to  be  affected 
often  have  such  dreadful  fancies  about  those  who 
are  dearest  to  them." 

"  Yes,  yes,  I  know,"  I  said,  and  I  hope  I  did  not 
let  my  tone  express  the  slight  impatience  I  felt  at 
being  obliged  to  traverse  ground  I  had  been  over 
with  Hermia  already  in  this  quest 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.        173 

"But  it  was  nothing  of  that  kind  whatever.  It 
was  " — Mrs.  Faulkner  hesitated,  as  if  to  prepare  me 
for  a  great  surprise — "jealousy." 

"Jealousy?"  I  repeated,  and  I  could  not  help 
throwing  into  the  word  a  touch  of  the  surprise 
which  she  evidently  expected  of  me.  I  had  not 
followed  her  so  far  without  perceiving  that  an  old 
lady  so  devoted  to  literature  valued  the  literary 
quality  of  the  situation ;  that  with  all  her  good 
sense  and  true  and  just  feeling  she  had  the  foible 
of  being  rather  proud  of  a  passage  in  her  family 
life  which  was  so  like  a  passage  of  romance. 

"Yes,"  she  went  on.  "  And  of  all  things,  jealousy 
of  her  with — with  James."  I  could  say  nothing  to 
a  fact  which  I  had  conjectured  long  before,  and  she 
continued  :  "  Dr.  "Wingate  seemed  to  think  that  now 
she  had  better  know  exactly  what  the  dream  was, 
since  the  paper  we  had  found  distressed  her  so  much, 
and  take  it  in  the  right  way.  It  was  a  scribble  in 
one  of  his  note-books,  on  a  leaf  that  he  had  torn  out 
and  probably  meant  to  tear  up.  It  had  the  date, 
and  it  spoke  of  his  having  that  dream  again ;  that 
he  had  begun  to  have  it  every  night,  and  if  he  fell 
asleep  by  day.  The  leaf  was  torn,  out  at  the  side 


174         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

in  places,  and  you  could  only  read  scraps  of  sentences, 
but  it  all  accused  her  of  wishing  his  death.  It 
would  have  driven  any  other  woman  wild,  hut  Her- 
mia  had  been  through  too  much  already.  She  told 
me  something  of  it,  to  explain  the  paper  as  well  as 
she  could;  and  she  said  that  she  knew  you  and 
Mrs.  March  had  noticed  something  strange  in 
Douglas's  manner  toward  her  the  day  you  were 
there ;  and  I  urged  her  to  go  right  on  and  consult 
you  both,  and  see  Dr.  Wingate,  and  find  out  exactly 
what  the  trouble  was." 

I  was  silent,  for  want  of  anything  fitting  to  say, 
though  she  seemed  to  expect  me  to  speak. 

"  The  doctor  told  her  that  Douglas  had  been  hav- 
ing the  dream  almost  a  year  before  he  died  :  at  first 
every  month  or  two,  and  then  every  week.  So  far 
as  he  could  remember,  it  was  always  exactly  the 
same  thing  from  the  very  beginning.  He  dreamed 
that  she  and  James  were — attached,  and  were  wait- 
ing for  him  to  die,  so  that  they  could  get  married. 
Then  he  would  see  them  getting  married  in  church, 
and  at  the  same  time  it  would  be  his  own  funeral, 
and  he  would  try  to  scream  out  that  he  was  not 
dead ;  but  Hermia  would  smile,  and  say  to  the  people 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         175 

that  she  had  known  James  before  she  knew  Douglas ; 
and  then  "both  ceremonies  would  go  on,  and  he  would 
wake.  That  was  all." 

"It  seems  to  me  quite  enough.  Horrible  !  Hor- 
rible !  I  'm  surprised  that  Wingate  should  have  told 
her." 

"He  had  to  do  so.  There  was  nothing  else. 
She  got  it  from  him  by  questioning ;  though  I  sup- 
pose he  thought  it  best  she  should  know  just  what 
the  trouble  was,  so  that  she  could  see  how  perfectly 
fantastic  it  was,  and  be  able  to  deal  with  it  accord- 
ingly." 

"  Poor  man  !  How  he  must  have  suffered  from 
that  unrelenting  nightmare !  And  it  seems  too 
ghastly  to  drag  from  his  grave  the  secret  he  kept 
while  he  lived."  These  thoughts  were  so  vivid  in 
my  mind  that  I  should  not  have  been  surprised  if 
Mrs.  Faulkner  had  replied  to  them  like  spoken 
words. 

But  she  only  said:  "There  were  some  strange 
details  of  the  dream,  which  it  seems  Dr.  Wingate 
recalled ;  he  may  have  written  it  down  after  hearing 
Douglas  tell  it ;  and  from  the  description  of  the 
church  which  he  gave,  Hermia  recognised  it  as  one 


176         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

here  in  the  city  :  James's  own  church.  Of  course," 
said  the  old  lady,  ignoring  the  shudder  with  which 
I  received  this  final  touch,  "Dr.  Wingate  might 
not  have  been  so  explicit  if  he  had  known  of  Her- 
mia's  engagement  to  James.  I  suppose  you  hadn't 
told  him?" 

"  No,"  I  said,  and  I  set  that  omission  down  as  the 
chief  enormity  in  -a  life  which  has  not  been  free 
from  some  blunders  worse  than  crimes. 

"  Well,  that  is  the  whole  affair,  and  we  must  act 
at  once,"  said  Mrs.  Faulkner. 

"Break  off  the  engagement,  of  course,"  was  at  my 
tongue's  end ;  but  I  found  out  I  had  said  nothing 
when  she  added — 

"James  must  know  it  all  without  delay.  He  has 
been  out  of  town,  but  he  will  be  home  to-night,  and 
he  must  know  it  before  he  meets  Hermia  again." 

"Of  course,"!  said. 

"We  talked  it  over  late  into  the  night,  and  we 
both  came  to  that  conclusion.  In  fact,  Hermia  had 
thought  it  out  on  the  way  home :  and  she  said  that 
just  as  the  train  came  in  sight  of  home  yesterday, 
it  all  flashed  upon  her  what  she  must  do.  She  must 
leave  the  future  wholly  to  James,  to  do  whatever  he 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.        177 

thought  right  after  he  knew  everything.  She  says 
it  came  to  her  like  a  sudden  relief  from  pain.  You 
must  have  thought  it  strange  we  could  keep  up,  as 
we  did  in  the  evening,  but  it  was  the  revulsion  of 
feeling  with  her,  and  I  knew  nothing  till  you  left  us. 
She  merely  said,  when  we  met,  'It  is  all  right, 
mother,'  and  I  should  have  thought  so,  if  she  had 
told  me  every  word.  The  decision  she  reached  is 
the  only  one.  We  must  leave  it  to  James.  She 
rests  in  that,  and  I  can't  say  whether  the  thought  of 
my  poor  son's  illusion  troubles  her  or  not,  in  itself. 
I  know  that  it  ought  not  to  trouble  her ;  but  at  the 
same  time  I  know  that  it  is  something  which  we 
ought  not  to  keep  from  James.  Men  often  look  at 
things  very  differently  from  women,  the  best  of 


V. 


IT  went  through  my  mind  that  the  affections  being 
the  main  interest  of  women's  lives,  perhaps  they 
dealt  with  them  more  practically  if  not  more  whole- 
somely than  men.  Certainly  their  treatment  of 
them  seems  much  more  business-like. 

Heaven  knows  what  was  really  in  that  old  woman's 
heart,  as  she  talked  so  bravely  of  a  future  from 
which  even  her  son's  memory  was  to  be  obliterated. 
Whether  it  was  a  sacrifice  of  herself  she  was  com- 
pleting, or  whether  she  was  accomplishing  an  end 
which  she  freely  intended,  I  shall  never  be  certain ; 
but  I  thought  afterward  that  she  had  perhaps  schooled 
herself  to  look  only  at  Hermia's  side  of  the  affair, 
and  had  come  to  feel  that  she  could  do  no  wrong  to 
the  dead,  whom  she  could  no  longer  help,  by  seeking 
the  happiness  of  the  living,  whom  she  could  help  so 
much.  I  myself  have  always  reasoned  to  this  effect, 
and  in  what  I  had  to  do  with  it  I  did  my  best  to 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         179 

bring  others  to  the  same  mind ;  and  yet  at  that 
moment,  in  that  place,  it  seemed  a  hellish  thing.  I 
saw  Faulkner  with  the  inner  vision  by  which  alone, 
doubtless,  we  see  the  dead,  standing  there  where  I 
first  met  him,  by  that  table  where  we  were  sitting, 
with  his  long  nervous  fingers,  yellowed  at  their  tips 
by  his  cigar,  trembling  on  an  open  page  ;  and  then  I 
saw  him  fall  back  on  the  seat  of  the  arbour  in  the 
old  seaside  garden  and  die.  What  a  long  tragedy  it 
was  that  had  passed  between  those  two  meetings ! 
Had  not  his  suffering  won  him  the  right  to  remem- 
brance 1  None  of  us  would  have  denied  this,  but 
what  was  proposed  was  to  forget  him ;  to  blot  his 
memory  and  his  sorrow,  as  he  had  himself  been 
blotted,  out  of  the  world  for  ever.  The  living  must 
do  this  for  their  lives'  sake;  the  dead  must  not 
master  us  through  an  immortal  grief.  All  the  same 
I  pitied  Faulkner,  pitied  him  even  for  his  baleful 
dream,  whose  shadow  had  clouded  his  own  life,  and 
seemed  destined  to  follow  that  of  others  as  relent- 
lessly ;  and  I  pitied  him  all  the  more  because  there 
seemed  no  one  to  do  it  but  me,  who  had  cared  for 
him  so  little  while  he  lived.  He  had  suffered  greatly, 
and  by  no  fault  of  his  own,  unless  you  could  blame 


180         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

his  folly  in  having  his  friend  so  familiarly  a  part  of 
his  home  that  his  crazy  jealousy  must  make  him  its 
object  almost  necessarily.  But  even  this  weakness, 
culpable  as  it  was,  was  a  weakness  and  not  a  wrong ; 
and  no  casuistry  could  prove  it  malevolent.  Some- 
thing impersonally  sinister  was  in  it  all,  and  the 
group  involved  was  severally  as  blameless  as  the 
victims  of  fate  in  a  Greek  trilogy.  Neither  I  nor 
any  other  witness  of  the  fact  considered  for  a  moment 
that  Faulkner  had  cause  for  the  dark  suspicion  which 
was  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  his  dream. 

I  do  not  know  whether  Mrs.  Faulkner  had  been 
saying  anything  else  before  I  woke  from  these 
thoughts  and  heard  her  say,  "I  have  spoken  very 
fully  and  freely  to  you,  Mr.  March,  both  because 
you  knew  much  of  this  matter  already,  and  because 
I  need — Hermia  needs — your  help.  We  depend 
upon  your  kindness ;  we  are  quite  helpless  without 
you,  and  you  were  one  of  my  son's  early  friends,  and 
can  enter  into  our  feelings." 

"I  assure  you,  Mrs.  Faulkner,"  I  began;  and  I 
was  going  to  say  that  the  matter  of  my  early  friend- 
ship with  her  son  had  somehow  always  been  strangely 
exaggerated ;  but  I  found  that  I  could  not  decently 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         181 

do  this,  under  the  circumstances,  and  I  said — "  There 
is  nothing  in  my  power  that  I  wouldn't  gladly  do 
for  you." 

"  I  was  certain  of  that,"  she  answered.  "  James 
must  know  of  this — of  the  whole  fact — as  soon  as  he 
gets  back.  But  Hermia  can't  write  to  him  about  it, 
and  I  can't  speak  to  him."  I  began  to  feel  a  cold 
apprehension  steal  over  me  ;  at  the  same  time  a  light 
of  intelligence  concerning  Hermia's  hospitable  eager- 
ness to  make  me  her  guest  dawned  upon  me.  Could 
that  exquisite  creature,  in  that  electrical  moment  of 
relief  from  her  trouble  have  foreseen  my  usefulness 
by  the  same  flash  that  showed  her  the  simple  duty 
she  had  in  the  matter  1  I  do  not  think  I  should 
have  blamed  her,  if  that  were  the  case ;  and  I  was 
prepared  for  Mrs.  Faulkner's  conclusion  :  "  We  must 
ask  you  to  speak  to  James." 

I  was  prepared,  but  I  was  certainly  dismayed,  too  ; 
and  I  promptly  protested  :  "  My  dear  Mrs.  Faulkner, 
I  don't  see  how  I  could  possibly  do  that.  I  am  very 
sorry,  very  sorry  indeed ;  but  I  cannot.  I  should 
not  feel  warranted  in  assuming  such  a  confidential 
mission  to  Mr.  Nevil,  by  my  really  slight  acquaint- 
ance, or  by  anything  in  my  past  relations  with  your 


182         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

son.  I  have  been  most  reluctant  to  know  anything 
about  this  painful  business,"  and  if  this  was  not 
quite  true,  it  was  certainly  true  that  I  had  not 
sought  to  know  anything.  "At  every  point  my 
wife  and  I  have  respected  the  secrecy  in  which  we 
felt  it  ought  to  remain,  even  against  the  impulse  of 
sympathetic  curiosity." 

"  Then  Mrs.  March  did  not  tell  you  what  it  was 
when  you  started  home  with  Hermia  ? " 

"  Surely  not !  She  would  have  thought  it  a 
betrayal  of  Mrs.  Faulkner  that  would  have  been 
embarrassing  to  me ;  and  how  could  you  suppose  I 
would  let  you  go  on  and  tell  me  the  whole  story  if 
I  knew  it  already  ? " 

"I  didn't  think  of  that,"  said  Mrs.  Faulkner. 
"  Hermia  and  I  both  took  it  for  granted  that  Mrs. 
March  had  told  you."  I  did  not  say  anything,  and 
she  added  ruefully,  "  Then  I  don't  know  what  we 
shall  do.  Is  it  asking  too  much  to  ask  if  you  can 
suggest  anything  ? " 

I  knew  from  her  tone  that  she  was  hurt  as  well  as 
disappointed  by  this  refusal  of  mine  to  act  for  them ; 
strange  as  it  appears,  she  must  have  counted  un- 
questioningly  upon  my  consent.  I  said,  to  gain  time 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         183 

as  much  as  possible,  for  I  had  no  doubt  on  that 
point,  "  Excuse  me,  Mrs.  Faulkner,  do  I  under- 
stand this  request  to  come  from  you  both  ? " 

"  No ;  my  daughter  knows  nothing  about  it.  The 
idea  of  asking  you  was  entirely  my  own  •  and  I 
made  a  point  of  seeing  you  as  soon  as  possible,  this 
morning.  If  you  must  refuse,  I  beg  you  will  not  let 
her  know." 

"  You  may  depend  upon  my  silence,  Mrs.  Faulk- 
ner. But,"  and  I  rose  and  began  to  walk  about  the 
room,  "why  should  you  tell  Mr.  Nevil  what  the 
dream  was  ;  or  at  least  that  it  concerned  him  ?  We 
must  consider  that,  in  the  light  of  reason,  the  thing 
is  non-existent.  It  has  no  manner  of  substance,  or 
claim  upon  any  one's  conscience,  or  even  interest. 
Dr.  Wingate  did  not  wish  Mrs.  Faulkner  to  know 
it ;  and  I  really  think  that  when  she  insisted,  he 
would  have  done  wisely  and  righteously  to  lie  to  her 
about  it.  I  'm  sure  he  would  have  done  so  if  he  had 
known  that  she  was  engaged  to  Mr.  Nevil.  But  it 's 
too  late,  now ;  the  mischief 's  done,  as  far  as  she 's 
concerned.  The  question  is  now  how  to  stop  the 
evil  from  going  farther ;  and  I  say  there  is  no 
necessity  for  Mr.  Nevil's  knowing  anything  about  it. 


184         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

Treat  it  from  this  moment  as  the  unreality  which  it 
is ;  ignore  it." 

I  went  on  to  the  same  effect ;  but  as  I  talked  I 
knew  more  and  more  that  I  was  wasting  my  breath, 
and  in  a  bad  cause,  and  I  saw  that  Mrs.  Faulkner 
even  ceased  to  follow  me.  One  of  the  maids  came 
to  my  rescue  with  the  announcement  that  breakfast 
was  served.  We  followed  her,  and  I  ate  with  the 
appetite  to  which  I  have  noticed  that  the  exercise  of 
the  sympathies  always  gives  an  edge  of  peculiar 
keenness. 


VI. 


HERMIA  did  not  join  us  at  breakfast,  but  I  had 
no  need  to  account  for  her  absence  upon  that  theory 
of  extreme  fatigue  from  her  journey,  which  Mrs. 
Faulkner  urged  with  so  much  superfluous  apology. 
I  began  to  have  my  reluctances  about  that  old  lady, 
to  wish  to  escape  from  her,  because  I  had  refused  to 
oblige  her  in  that  little  matter  of  interviewing  Nevil, 
and  I  was  afraid  she  would  recur  to  it.  I  made  an 
excuse  of  wanting  to  look  about  the  town,  and  I 
went  out  as  soon  as  I  could  get  away  after  breakfast. 

Now  that  I  was  there,  and  had  come  so  far,  I  was 
willing  to  see  all  I  could  of  the  place,  and  of  several 
people  in  it  whom  I  remembered  as  very  charming ; 
and  I  felt  exasperated  by  the  terms  of  my  presence. 
I  reviled  myself  for  going  to  the  Faulkners,  though  I 
knew  I  could  not  help  it ;  but  being  their  guest  I 
could  not  leave  them  except  to  leave  town.  I 
strolled  about  harassed  with  the  notion  that  I  would 


186         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

go  on  the  night  express,  and  denying  myself  in  the 
interest  of  this  early  departure  all  those  little  lapses 
into  sentiment  concerning  the  past  which  I  had 
always  expected  to  indulge  when  I  returned  to  its 
scenes.  I  found  myself  unwilling  to  meet  my  old 
friends,  with  the  burden  on  me  of  having  to  say  that 
I  was  there  only  for  the  day,  and  to  explain  that  I 
had  come  on  with  Mrs.  Faulkner,  and  was  her  guest. 
I  hated  the  air  of  mystery  the  affair  would  have ; 
but  there  was  one  person  whom  I  could  not  really 
think  of  going  away  without  seeing.  As  a  young 
man  I  used  to  come  and  go  in  her  house  as  freely  as 
in  my  own  home,  at  any  time  between  nine  in  the 
morning  and  twelve  at  night ;  she  had  been  kind  to 
me,  and  helpful  and  inspiring,  as  only  a  brilliant 
woman  of  the  world,  who  is  also  good,  can  be  to  an 
ambitious,  shy,  awkward  young  fellow  of  twenty- 
two  ;  and  I  decided  to  make  hers  stand  for  all  the 
friendships  of  the  past. 

She  made  me  so  sweetly  welcome  that  in  a  moment 
we  had  broken  through  the  little  web  of  alienation 
that  the  spider  years  had  been  spinning  between  us ; 
and  found  ourselves  exactly  in  the  old  relations 
again.  I  had  been  a  little  curious,  after  seeing  so 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         187 

much  of  the  world,  to  see  whether  she  would  appear 
as  clever  and  accomplished  as  she  used  to  seem ;  and 
I  was  glad  to  find  she  bore  the  test  of  my  mature 
experience  perfectly.  After  all,  it  is  such  women 
who  make  the  polite  world,  wherever  we  find  it; 
not  the  world  them.  Her  tact  divined,  without  any 
motion  of  mine,  all  the  external  points  of  the  case, 
and  made  it  seem  even  to  me  the  most  natural  thing 
possible  that  I  should  have  seized  the  occasion  of 
Mrs.  Faulkner's  being  in  Boston  to  run  out  with  her 
to  my  old  home,  if  only  for  a  day,  and  give  my  old 
friends  a  glimpse  of  me.  She  supposed  that  I  must 
be  devoted  to  the  Faulkners  for  the  short  time  I 
stayed,  and  she  would  merely  insist  upon  my  lunch- 
ing with  her ;  she  would  make  my  peace  with  Mrs. 
Faulkner.  Was  not  she  exquisite  ?  Had  I  ever  met 
any  one  just  like  her  ?  And  what  a  life  of  self-devo- 
tion, and  then  of  sorrow  !  No,  no  one  could  under- 
stand what  she  had  been  through,  unless  they  had 
seen  something  of  it  day  by  day.  But  I  had  seen 
something ;  the  most  tragical  thing  of  all,  perhaps ; 
and  my  wife  had  been  so  good  !  Mrs.  Faulkner  had 
told  her  about  Mrs.  March. 

The  talk  naturally  confined  itself  to  Mrs.  Faulkner 


188        THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

for  a  time,  and  it  naturally  returned  to  her  from 
whatever  excursions  it  made  in  other  directions. 
After  a  while,  it  began,  somehow,  to  include  Nevil, 
whom  I  found  to  be  another  of  my  friend's  enthu- 
siasms ;  she  celebrated  him  with  the  fervour  that  is 
rather  characteristic  of  hero-and-heroine  worship  in 
small  places,  where  people  almost  have  their  noses 
against  the  altar.  I  trembled  inwardly  for  the  secret 
I  was  guarding,  for  I  felt  that  my  friend  would  have 
it  out  of  me  in  an  instant  if  she  suspected  me  of  its 
custody,  but  apparently  she  knew  nothing  of  the 
engagement.  She  asked  me  if  I  had  heard  of  that 
horrid  affair  out  West  which  had  given  poor  Mr. 
Nevil  back  to  them  again ;  and  she  said  she  supposed 
he  would  never  think  of  marrying,  now.  She  wished 
that  he  would  marry  Hermia  Faulkner ;  it  would  be 
more  than  appropriate ;  it  would  be  ideal ;  they  were 
exactly  suited  to  each  other ;  and  she  could  help  him 
in  his  work  as  no  other  woman  could.  She  deserved 
some  happiness ;  but  it  would  be  like  her  to  go  on 
dedicating  her  whole  existence  to  the  memory  of 
a  man  who  was  really  her  inferior,  and  who  had 
nothing  to  commend  him  to  her  constancy  except 
his  love  for  her.  Of  his  love  for  her  you  could  not 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.        189 

say  enough ;  but  my  friend  reminded  me  that  she 
had  never  considered  him  the  wonderful  person  that 
some  people  thought  him ;  and  she  scouted  the 
notion  of  his  having  married  beneath  him  in  marry- 
ing Hermia  Winter.  Her  people  were  very  nice 
people,  though  they  were  so  poor ;  they  were  ideal- 
ists ;  and  her  father  had  come  West  and  settled  on 
Pawpaw  Creek  after  the  failure  of  one  of  those  com- 
munities in  New  England,  which  he  had  been  con- 
nected with.  As  for  Hermia  herself,  whom  my 
friend  remembered  in  her  Bell's  Institute  days,  she 
was  a  girl  of  the  rarest  intelligence  and  character ;  a 
being  quite  supernal! y  above  a  ward  politician,  and 
a  pretentious  dilettante  like  Douglas  Faulkner,  whose 
"  three  times  skimmed  sky-blue"  Virginia  blood  was 
full  of  the  barbaric  pride  of  a  race  of  slave-holders. 
As  my  friend  went  on  she  characterised  poor  Faulkner 
with  a  violent  excess  which  would  have  satisfied  even 
Mrs.  March  the  day  when  she  first  met  him  at  Swamp- 
scott,  and  he  betrayed  his  defective  tastes  in  litera- 
ture and  art.  Of  course  I  said  that  this  was  exactly 
the  way  in  which  he  had  impressed  my  wife ;  and  I 
defended  him.  But  she  told  me  I  might  spare  my 
breath  ;  that  she  knew  I  really  thought  just  as  my 


190         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

wife  and  she  did  about  him  ;  and  that  if  James  Nevil 
had  not  been  a  saint  upon  earth  he  never  could  have 
endured  the  man. 

"  We  are  both  saints,"  I  suggested.  "  I  endured 
him." 

"  Oh  no,  you  're  not.  Nevil  really  loved  him, 
and  I  believe  he  loves  his  memory  to  this  day." 

"  Well,  at  any  rate  Faulkner 's  out  of  the  story," 
I  urged. 

"I'm  not  so  sure  01  that!"  cried  my  friend. 
"I'm  afraid  it's  their  foolish  constancy  to  him  that 
keeps  those  two  from  thinking  of  each  other." 

"  Are  you,  really  1 "  I  asked,  and  I  found  a  per- 
verse amusement  in  playing  with  her  shrewd  ignor- 
ance so  near  my  knowledge,  which  it  could  so  easily 
have  penetrated.  "  It  seems  to  me  that  if  they 
were  inclined  to  each  other,  their  allegiance  to  the 
dead  would  have  very  little  effect.  I  suspect  that 
conscience,  or  the  moral  sentiments,  or  whatever  we 
call  the  supersensuous  equipment,  has  nothing  to  do 
with  people's  falling  in  love,  except  to  find  reasons 
and  justifications  for  it,  and  to  add  a  zest  to  it." 

".  I  will  write  that  to  Mrs.  March,"  said  my  friend, 
"  and  ask  her  if  those  are  her  ideas,  too." 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         191 

"  Oh,  I  know  !"  I  answered  airily.  "  You  ladies 
like  to  pretend  that  it's  an  affair  of  the  soul,  or  if 
possible,  of  the  intellect ;  and  as  your  favour  is  the 
breath  of  the  novelists'  nostrils,  they  all  flatter  you 
up  in  your  pretension,  till  you  get  to  believing  in  it 
yourselves.  But  at  the  bottom  of  your  hearts,  you 
know,  as  ive  do,  that  it 's  a  plain,  earthly  affair,  for 
this  life,  for  this  trip  and  train  only." 

"  Shocking  !  shocking  ! "  said  my  friend,  shaking 
her  head,  which  had  grown  charmingly  grey,  in  a 
marquise  manner,  and  evincing  her  delight  in  the 
boldness  with  which  I  handled  the  matter. 

"  You  may  be  sure,"  I  concluded,  "  that  if  these 
two  people  have  not  fallen  in  love,  it 's  because  they 
don't  fancy  each  other.  If  they  did,  there  would  be 
no  consideration  of  sentiment,  no  air-woven  tie  of 
fealty  to  a  love  or  a  friendship  of  the  past  which 
would  hold  them  in  the  leash.  If  Faulkner's  ghost 
rose  between  them,  they  would  plunge  through  it 
into  each  other's  arms." 

"  Ah,  now  you  are  talking  atrociously  1 "  said  my 
friend. 

I  had  indeed  been  hurried  a  little  beyond  myself 
by  a  sudden  realisation  of  the  fact  that  so  far  as 


192         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

Hermia  was  concerned,  the  past  was  obliterated  by 
her  determination  to  leave  everything  to  Nevil ;  and 
that  as  soon  as  Nevil  knew  everything,  he  would 
decide,  as  I  should  have  decided,  that  every  consi- 
deration of  honour  and  delicacy  and  duty,  as  well  as 
of  love,  bound  him  to  her.  An  added  impulse  had 
been  given  to  my  words  by  the  consciousness  that  I 
was  the  only  means  of  making  her  determination 
known  to  him,  that  whether  she  had  inspired  her 
mother  to  ask  this  service  of  me  or  not,  she  tacitly 
hoped  it,  and  that  in  the  end  I  should  probably 
somehow  render  it. 

But  I  instinctively  fought  off  from  it  as  long  as  I 
could,  and  I  resolved  to  leave  town  without  render- 
ing it  if  possible.  I  spent  most  of  the  afternoon 
with  my  friend  ;  and  she  sent  a  late  embassy  to  the 
Faulkners  to  know  if  she  might  keep  me  to  dinner. 
They  consented,  as  they  must ;  Hermia  herself  wrote 
that  she  consented  only  because  she  was  so  com- 
pletely prostrated  that  she  could  not  hope  to  see 
me  at  dinner,  and  her  mother  was  not  well ;  they 
counted  upon  having  me  several  days  with  them, 
and  they  would  not  be  selfish. 


VII. 


THE  Faulkners  of  course  kne\v  nothing  of  my  in- 
tention of  going  that  night,  and  I  stayed  rather  late 
after  dinner,  so  that  I  should  not  have  much  more 
time  than  I  needed  to  pack  my  bag  and  catch  my 
train.  I  thought  that  if  I  could  not  altogether 
escape  an  embarrassing  urgence  from  them  to  stay 
longer,  I  could  at  least  cut  it  short.  But  I  found 
that  it  was  a  needless  precaution  when  I  went  back 
to  them.  Mrs.  Faulkner,  the  mother,  received  my 
reasons  for  hurrying  home  with  all  the  acquiescence 
I  could  have  wished.  She  said  she  knew  I  must  be 
anxious  to  get  back  to  my  family  whom  I  had  left 
at  such  short  notice  ;  that  Hermia  and  herself  ap- 
preciated my  kindness  and  my  wife's  goodness  more 
than  they  could  ever  express ;  but  they  hoped  and 
prayed  that  if  our  need  should  ever  be  like  theirs 
we  might  find  such  friends  in  it  as  we  had  been  to 
them.  I  felt  an  unintentional  irony  in  these  thanks 
N 


194         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

so  far  as  they  concerned  the  perfection  of  my  own 
friendship,  but  I  still  had  no  disposition  to  repair  its 
lack  by  offering  to  see  Nevil  for  her.  That,  I  felt, 
more  and  more,  I  could  not  do;  but  I  stood  a 
moment,  questioning  whether  I  ought  not  to  renew 
my  expressions  of  regret  that  I  could  not  do  it.  I 
ended  by  saying  that  I  hoped  all  would  turn  out  for 
the  best  with  them ;  and  I  added  some  platitudes  and 
inanities  which  she  seemed  not  to  hear,  for  she  broke 
in  upon  them  with  excuses  for  Hermia,  who  would  not 
be  able  to  see  me,  she  was  afraid.  I  said  I  knew 
what  a  wretched  day  she  had  been  having,  and  I 
left  my  adieux  with  Mrs.  Faulkner  for  her.  Perhaps 
if  I  had  not  myself  been  so  distraught  I  might  have 
noticed  more  the  incoherent  attention  Mrs.  Faulkner 
was  able  to  give  me  throughout  this  interview.  But 
I  did  not  realise  it  till  afterward.  I  went  to  my 
room,  glad  to  have  it  over  so  easily,  and  resolved  to 
get  out  of  the  house  with  all  possible  despatch.  I 
had  a  carriage  at  the  gate,  and  I  looked  forward  to 
.waiting  an  hour  and  a  half  in  the  depot  before  my 
train  started  with  more  pleasure  than  such  a  pro- 
spect ever  inspired  in  me  before. 

In  the  confusion  which  afterward  explained  and 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         195 

justified  itself,  Mrs.  Faulkner  had  failed  to  offer  me 
the  superfluous  help  of  a  servant  to  fetch  down  my 
bag,  and  I  was  descending  the  stairs  with  it  in  my 
hand  when  I  heard  a  door  close  in  the  corridor 
which  led  to  Faulkner's  den.  Steps  uneven  and 
irregular  advanced  toward  the  square  hall  at  the  foot 
of  the  stairs,  and  in  a  moment  I  saw  a  man  stagger 
into  the  light,  and  stay  himself  by  a  clutch  at  the 
newel  post.  He  looked  around  as  if  dazed,  and 
then  vaguely  up  at  me,  where  I  stood  as  motionless 
and  helpless  as  he.  I  have  no  belief  he  saw  me ; 
but  at  any  rate,  Nevil  turned  at  the  cry  of  "James  ! 
James ! "  which  came  in  Hermia's  voice  from  the 
corridor,  and  caught  her  in  his  arms  as  she  flew 
upon  him.  She  locked  her  arms  around  his  neck, 
and  wildly  kissed  him  again  and  again,  with  sobs 
such  as  break  from  the  ruin  of  life  and  love ;  with 
gasps  like  dying,  and  with  a  fond,  passionate  moan- 
ing broken  by  the  sound  of  those  fierce,  swift  kisses. 
I  pitied  her  far  too  much  to  feel  ashamed  of  my 
involuntary  witness  of  the  scene ;  though  as  for 
that  I  do  not  believe  she  would  have  foregone  one 
caress  if  she  had  known  that  all  the  world  was 
looking.  I  perceived  that  this  was  the  end ;  and  I 


196  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DKEAM. 

understood  as  clearly  as  if  I  had  been  told  that  she 
had  confided  her  secret  to  him,  had  left  their  fate 
in  his  hands,  and  that  he  had  decided  against  their 
love.  It  maddened  me  against  him,  to  think  he 
had  done  that.  I  did  not  know,  I  did  not  care,  what 
motive,  what  reason,  what  scruple  had  governed 
him;  I  felt  that  there  could  be  only  one  good  in 
the  world,  and  that  was  the  happiness  of  that 
woman.  For  the  moment  this  happiness  seemed 
centred  and  existent  solely  in  her  possession  of  him. 
But  I  was  sensible,  through  my  compassion  and  my 
indignation,  that  whatever  he  had  done,  she  was 
admiring,  adoring  him  for  it.  I  saw  that  in  a  flash 
of  her  upturned  face,  as  I  stood,  with  my  heart  in 
my  mouth,  before  the  tragedy  of  their  renunciation. 
The  play  suddenly  ended.  With  one  last  long  kiss 
she  pushed  him  from  her,  and  fled  back  into  the 
corridor. 


VIII. 

I  FOUND  myself  outside  in  the  night,  and  at  the 
gate  I  found  Nevil  in  parley  with  my  coachman, 
who  was  explaining  to  him  that  he  was  engaged  to 
take  a  gentleman  inside  the  house,  there,  to  the 
depot,  and  could  not  carry  Nevil  home. 

"Get  in,  Mr.  Nevil,"  I  said.  "I've  plenty  of 
time,  and  can  drop  you  wherever  you  say." 

Ifc  was  as  if  we  had  both  just  come  out  of  the 
theatre,  and  actor  and  spectator  had  met  on  the 
same  footing  of  the  commonplace  world  of  reality. 

"  Oh,  Mr.  March  ! "  he  said.  "  Is  that  you  1  I 
iclll  drive  with  you  as  far  as  my  study,  if  you  '11  let 
me.  I  don't  feel  quite  able  to  walk." 

"  Yes,  certainly,     Get  in." 

He  gave  the  direction,  "St.  Luke's  Church,"  and 
I  followed  him  into  the  hack,  and  he  shrank  into 
the  corner,  and  scarcely  spoke  till  we  reached  the 
church.  By  the  gleams  that  the  street  lamps  threw 
into  the  windows  as  we  passed  them  I  had  glimpses 


198         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

of  his  face,  haggard  and  estranged.  He  tried  to  fit 
his  latch-key  to  the  door  in  the  church  edifice,  and 
then  gave  it  to  me,  saying,  with  pathetic  feebleness, 
"  You  do  it.  I  can't.  And  don't  go — don't  leave 
me,"  he  added,  as  we  entered.  "  Come  in,  a  moment." 

I  told  the  driver  to  wait,  and  I  suppose  he  had  his 
conjectures  as  to  the  condition  in  which  I  was  get- 
ting the  Rev.  James  Nevil  into  his  study.  He  was 
like  one  drunk,  and  he  went  reeling  and  stumbling 
before  me.  Once  within  he  seemed  almost  uncon- 
scious of  me,  where  he  sat  sunken  in  an  arm-chair, 
staring  at  the  fire  in  the  grate,  and  I  waited  for  him 
to  speak.  At  last  I  made  a  movement,  and  he  took 
it  as  a  sign  of  departure  and  put  out  his  hand 
entreatingly.  "  No,  no !  You  mustn't  go.  I 

want  to  tell  you "  And  then  he  lapsed  again 

into  his  silence.  At  last  he  broke  from  it  with  a 
long  sigh :  that  "  Ah-h-h ! "  which  I  remembered 
from  the  time  when  he  spoke,  on  the  cliffs  by  the 
sea,  of  Faulkner's  unkindness  to  Hermia.  "Well, 
it  is  ended  ! " 

I  had  not  the  heart  to  pretend  that  I  did  not  know 
what  he  meant.  I  said  nothing,  and  he  lifted  his  face 
toward  me  where  I  stood,  leaning  on  his  chimney-piece. 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.  199 

"Hermia  has  told  me  that  you  know  about  this 
unhappiness  of  ours,"  he  said  hoarsely.  "  Your 
knowledge  makes  you  the  one  human  being  whom  I 
can  speak  to  of  it ;  perhaps  it  gives  you  the  right  to 
know  all — all  there  is." 

"  No,  no,"  I  protested.  "  I  have  no  claim,  and  I 
haven't  the  wish."  I  mechanically  referred  to  my 
watch,  and  seeing  that  I  had  abundant  time  before 
my  train  went,  I  dropped  into  the  chair  beside  the 
hearth,  and  ended  by  saying,  "  But  I  should  be  glad 
if  I  could  in  any  way  serve  you  or  help  you.  I  do 
know  the  painful  situation  in  which  you  are  placed, 
and  though  I  can  truly  say  that  neither  my  wife  nor 
I  have  ever  tried  to  know  of  it,  I  confess  that  we 
have  been  most  deeply  interested,  and  you  have 
both  had  our  sympathy  in  a  measure  which  I  needn't 
try  to  express."  I  instinctively  calmed  my  tone  to 
an  effect  of  quiet  upon  his  agitation. 

"  You  have  been  very  good — far  kinder  friends 
than  we  could  have  hoped  to  find,  and  there  is 
nothing  that  such  friends  as  you  may  not  know,  so 
far  as  we  are  concerned.  But  there  is  very  little 
more  to  tell.  It  is  all  over." 

I  thought  he  wished  me  to  ask  how,  and  I  said, 


200  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

"  Mrs.  Faulkner's  mother  told  me  this  morning  that 
they  were  waiting  to  see  you — or  rather  to  let  you 

know  on  your  return " 

"  Yes.  I  expected  to  return  to-night,  but  I  came 
back  late  this  afternoon,  and  I  went  directly  to  them, 
of  course.  It  was  not  what  Hermia  wished — it  was 
what  she  dreaded  most — but  it  was  doubtless  for 
the  best;  at  any  rate  it  happened.  In  a  moment 
we  were  confronted  with  our  question.  She  told 
me,  fully  and  fearlessly,  as  she  deals  with  every- 
thing, just  what  it  was,  and  we  set  ourselves  to 
solve  it — to  solve  it,  if  possible,  in  favour  of  our- 
selves, our  weakness,  perhaps  our  sin  ! "  His  head 
dropped  on  his  breast,  and  I  saw  his  eyes  fixed  with  a 
dreary  stare  on  the  smouldering  fire.  I  was  sensible, 
without  looking  about  it  much,  of  the  character  of 
the  room.  It  was  one  of  those  studies  which  clergy- 
men for  their  convenience  sometimes  have  in  their 
church  buildings,  and  where  I  suppose  they  go  to 
read  and  write  and  think,  and  transact  church  busi- 
ness with  the  officers  of  their  church,  and  receive 
people  who  come  to  them  for  counsel  or  comfort 
in  such  straits  as  those  which  bring  us  in  piteous 
entreaty  before  the  ministers  of  conscience.  It  is  a 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         201 

kind  of  Protestant  confessional ;  and  while  I  waited 
for  Nevil  to  speak  again,  I  recalled  stories  I  had 
heard  of  guilty  souls  seeking  such  an  asylum  for  that 
relief  which  we  shall  all  know  at  the  judgment-day, 
when  we  shall  be  stripped  bare  before  the  divine 
compassion  down  to  our  inmost  thoughts  and  pur- 
poses. Women  who  have  betrayed  their  husbands 
go  there  to  own  their  shame ;  men  that  have  cheated 
and  stolen  and  lied  go  there  to  lay  the  burden  of 
their  wrong-doing  upon  the  priest  of  God ;  and  with 
these  a  mass  of  minor  sinners,  with  their  peccadil- 
loes of  temper  and  breeding  and  deceit ;  as  well  as 
the  self-accusers  who  wish  to  purge  their  spirits  even 
of  the  dread  of  sin,  and  to  receive  the  acquittal  which 
they  cannot  give  themselves.  More  and  more  as 
Nevil  went  on  it  seemed  to  me  that  the  place 
was  not  favourable  to  a  judicial  examination  of 
his  own  case ;  that  the  colour  of  things  he  had 
heard  there  must  stain  and  blacken  the  facts  of  his 
own  experience,  and  prevent  him  from  seeing 
them  aright. 

"  The  question  was,"  he  said,  lifting  his  head,  and 
bending  that  hopeless  stare  on  me,  "  not  what  we 
should  do,  with  that  shadow  of  Faulkner's  dream 


202         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

hanging  over  us,  but  what  we  had  done — what  /  had 
done — to  cause  him  the  torment  of  such  a  dream." 

"  For  Heaven's  sake,  Mr.  Nevil,"  I  broke  in,  "  don't 
take  that  way  of  looking  at  it.  You  had  no  more 
to  do  with  causing  that  dream  than  I  had.  The 
pain  he  suffered — the  physical  pain — caused  the 
craze  which  his  dream  came  from.  It  was  a  som- 
nambulic  mania — nothing  more  and  nothing  less. 
Dr.  Wingate  assured  Mrs.  Faulkner  in  the  most 
solemn  manner " 

"  Ah,  the  sincerity  of  a  doctor  with  his  patient ! 
He  is  a  skilful  man,  very  able,  very  learned ;  he 
knows  all  about  the  body,  but  the  soul  and  its 
secrets  are  beyond  science.  There  are  facts  in  the 
case  that  he  has  never  had  before  him.  I  knew 
Hermia  first,  in  the  loveliness  of  her  young  girlhood, 
and  I  brought  her  and  Faulkner  together." 

I  murmured,  "  Yes,  I  remember  you  told  me." 

"  I  saw  the  impression  she  instantly  made  upon 
him:  it  was  love  at  first  sight.  But  though  the 
love  of  her  had  possessed  his  whole  soul,  he  was 
first  faithful  to  his  friendship  with  me.  In  that 
childlike,  simple,  cordial  truthfulness  of  his,  which 
no  one  ever  knew  so  fully  as  I,  and  which  I  shall 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         203 

never  see  in  any  other  man,  he  pressed  me  to  tell 
him  whether  I  had  any  feeling  for  her  myself,  for 
then  he  would  go  away,  and  live  his  passion  down, 
as  best  he  could,  and  leave  her  to  me.  I  assured 
him  that  I  had  no  such  feeling,  no  feeling  but  that 
pleasure  in  her  beauty  and  goodness  which  every 
one  must  have  in  her  presence,  and — they  were 
married." 

The  silence  following  upon  the  gasp  in  which 
these  words  ended  was  not  such  as  I  could  break. 
After  a  moment  Nevil  went  on — 

"  I  believed  what  I  said ;  I  have  never  doubted 
it  till  this  day.  But — how  do  I  know — how  do  I 
know — that  I  was  not  in  love  with  her  then,  that  I 
have  not  always  been  in  love  with  her  through  all 
his  life  and  death  1  It  is  such  a  subtle,  such  a  fatal 
thing  in  its  perversion !  I  have  seen  it  in  others ; 
why  shouldn't  it  be  in  me  ?  Why  shouldn't  we 
have  been  playing  a  part  unknowingly  to  ourselves, 
hypocrites  before  our  own  souls  ?  Why  should  I 
ever  have  consented  to  be  with  them,  to  qualify 
their  home  by  an  alien  presence,  through  the  daily, 
hourly  lie  of  friendship  for  him,  except  that  I  loved 
her,  and  longed  to  be  near  her  1  Why  could  not  I 


204         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

have  kept  the  love  of  that  poor,  foolish  young  girl, 
innocent  and  harmless,  for  all  her  levity,  which  she 
gave  me  out  there  in  the  "West,  except  that  in  the 
guilty  inmost  of  my  heart  there  was  no  room  for 
anything  but  love  for  my  friend's  wife,  whom  it  had 
made  his  widow  ?  Why " 

"  Hold  on  !  Wait !  This  is  monstrous  ! "  I 
broke  in  upon  him.  "  It 's  atrocious.  You  're  the 
victim  of  your  own  morbid  introspection,  of  a  kind 
of  self-analysis  that  never  ends  in  anything  but  self- 
conviction.  I  know  what  it  is,  every  one  knows; 
and  it 's  your  right,  it 's  your  duty  as  a  man  to  stand 
out  against  it,  and  not  let  the  honest  and  lawful 
feeling  you  now  have  damn  the  past  to  shame  ! " 

I  spoke  vehemently,  far  beyond  any  explicit  right 
I  had  to  adjure  him,  but  I  could  see  that  my  words 
had  not  the  slightest  weight  with  him. 

"  And  Hermia,"  he  went  on,  "  why  should  she 
have  cared  nothing  for  Faulkner  at  first  1  Why, 
when  she  believed  she  had  schooled  herself  to  love 
him,  should  she  have  suffered  the  ever-repeated  in- 
trusion of  my  presence  in  her  home  ?  Why  should 
she  have  refused  so  long  to  know  what  his  dream 
was  ?  Why  should  we  have  made  such  haste  to 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.        205 

separate  after  Faulkner's  death,  and  then  why 
should  my  thoughts  have  turned  so  instantly  to 
her,  with  such  longing  for  her  pity,  in  that  shame 
I  underwent,  and  why  should  she  have  honoured  and 
not  despised  me  for  a  misfortune  that  my  own  folly 
had  provoked  ?  There  is  one  answer  to  it  all ! " 

"  And  the  answer  is  that  your  view  of  the  case  is 
as  purely  an  aberration  as  Faulkner's  dream." 

"  Ah,  you  can't  account  for  everything  on  the 
ground  of  madness !  Somewhere,  some  time,  there 
must  be  responsibility  for  wrong." 

"  Even  if  we  have  to  find  it  in  innocence  !  I  tell 
you  that  your  view  of  the  situation  is  as  false  as  that 
which  the  lowest  scandal-mongering  mind  of  an  enemy 
could  take  of  it.  You  are  bound  to  let  your  own  char- 
acter— or  if  not  your  character,  then  her  character, 
her  nature — count  for  something  in  making  up  such 
a  judgment.  I  will  leave  you  out  of  the  question,  if 
you  like,  but  I  would  stake  my  life  upon  the  single- 
ness of  her  devotion  in  thought,  feeling,  and  deed 
to  that  wretched  man  whose  misery  seems  such  an 
inextinguishable  poison.  It's  preposterous  that  I 
should  be  defending  her  to  you;  but  if  you  have 
suffered  her  to  share  these  misgivings  of  yours,  I  say 


206  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

you've  done  a  cruel  thing.  I  know — her  mother 
told  me — that  after  what  she  underwent  from  learn- 
ing just  what  Faulkner's  dream  was — and  my  wife 
and  I  saw  something  of  her  suffering,  both  in  Boston 
and  on  the  way  out  here " 

"  Ah— h— h  ! "  he  breathed. 

"  She  had  found  peace  in  her  reliance,  her  perfect 
faith  in  your  conscience,  in  your  sense  of  justice,  and 
your  instinct  of  right ;  and,  if  you  will  allow  me  to  say 
so,  you  were  most  sacredly  bound  not  to  let  any  per- 
verse scruple,  any  self-indulgent  misgiving,  betray  her 
trust  in  you.  You  are  a  man,  with  a  man's  larger 
outlook,  and  you  should  have  been  the  perspective 
in  which  she  could  see  the  whole  matter  truly.  If 
you  have  failed  her  in  this  you  have  been  guilty  of 
something  worse  than  anything  you  accuse  yourself 
of.  Take  the  thing  at  its  worst !  I  refuse  to  con- 
sider that  she  ever  allowed  her  fancy  to  stray  from 
her  duty,  but  suppose  that  you  were  in  love  with 
her,  in  that  unconscious  way  you  imagine  :  who  was 
hurt,  who  was  deceived  by  it  ?  What  harm  was 
done  ?  I  will  go  farther,  and  ask  what  harm  was 
there,  even  if  you  knew  you  were  in  love  with  her  ? 
You  let  no  one  else  know  it — her,  least  of  any." 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.        207 

The  words,  when  I  had  got  them  out,  shocked  me ; 
they  certainly  did  not  represent  my  own  feeling 
about  such  a  situation  ;  I  was  glad  my  wife  had 
not  heard  them  ;  and  I  saw  the  horror  of  me  that 
came  into  Nevil's  face.  I  felt  myself  getting  hot 
and  red,  and  I  hastened  to  add,  "You  will  forgive 
me,  if  I  try  to  put  before  you  the  mere  legal,  practi- 
cal, matter-of-fact  view  of  the  affair,"  and  I  could 
not  help  remembering  that  it  was  also  the  romantic 
view,  which  I  had  found  celebrated  in  many  novels 
as  something  peculiarly  fine  and  noble  and  high, 
something  heroic  in  the  silently  suffering  lover.  "  I 
admit  that  I  have  no  right  to  speak  to  you  at 
all " 

"  Go  on ;  I  invite  you  to  speak,"  he  said  gently. 

"  Then  I  will  say  that  my  only  desire  is  to — to — 
how  shall  I  say  it  ? — urge  that  this  is  altogether  an 
affair  of  the  future,  and  that  if  you  allow  the  un- 
happy past,  which  is  dead,  and  ought  to  be  buried 
with  Faulkner,  to  dominate  you,  or  to  shape  your 
relations,  you  seem  to  me  to  be " 

I  found  myself  talking  sophistries,  and  I  had 
nothing  to  say  when  he  took  up  the  word  where  I 
broke  off. 


208  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

"  Recognising  the  fact  that  the  future  is  the 
creature,  the  mere  consequence  of  the  past !  With- 
out what  has  been,  nothing  can  be.  Oh,  we  have 
looked  at  it  in  every  light !  At  first,  when  she  told 
me,  I  was  as  bold,  as  defiant,  as  a  man  can  be  who 
finds  himself  unjustly  defamed.  I  said  that  if  ever 
we  had  felt  reluctance  or  doubt  in  our  allegiance 
to  the  dead,  now  it  was  our  right,  our  duty,  to  feel 
none.  We  should  accuse  ourselves  if  we  admitted 
that  any  accusal  could  lie  against  us.  The  very 
innocence  of  our  lives  demanded  vindication ;  we 
ghould  be  recreant  to  our  good  consciences  if  we  did 
not  treat  that  wretched  figment  of  a  dreaming  craze  as 
it  deserved.  For  a  moment — for  an  hour — we  were 
happy  in  the  escape  which  my  defiance  won  for  us, 
and  we  built  that  future  without  a  past  which  you 
think  can  stand.  It  fell  to  ruin.  We  had  deceived 
each  other,  but  the  deceit  could  not  last.  Our  very 
indignation  at  the  treason  imputed  to  us  by  Faulk- 
ner's dream  made  us  examine  our  hearts,  and  ques- 
tion each  other.  We  could  not  tell  when  our  love 
began,  and  that  mystery  of  origin  which  love  par- 
takes  of  with  eternity,  and  which  makes  it  seem  so 
divine  a  thing,  became  a  witness  against  us.  We 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         209 

said  that  if  we  could  not  make  sure  that  no  thought 
we  had  ever  had  of  each  other  in  his  lifetime  was 
false  to  him,  then  we  were  guilty  of  all,  and  we 
must  part." 

"  Oh,"  I  groaned  out,  "what  mere  madness  of  the 
moon  ! " 

"  It  was  not  I  who  pronounced  our  sentence  ;  she 
saw  herself  that  it  must  be  so ;  it  was  she  who  sent 
me  from  her." 

"  Yes ;  only  a  woman  could  be  capable  of  it, 
could  be  such  a  moral  hypochondriac !  But  if  she 
sent  you  away,  and  you  know,  as  you  must  know, 
that  in  her  heart  she  wished  you  to  stay,  why  not 
in  Heaven's  name  go  back  to  her  1 " 

"  Ah,  you  think  I  didn't  go  back  !  You  think  we 
parted  once  only  !  We  parted  a  hundred  times  ! " 

"  But,"  I  said,  "  you  will  see  it  all  differently  to- 
morrow, and  you  must  go  back  to  her,  and  whether 
she  bids  you  go  or  not,  you  must  never  leave  her." 

"  And  what  sort  of  life  would  that  be  1  A  life  of 
defiance,  of  recklessness,  a  mere  futureless  present ! 
I  am  a  priest  of  the  Church,  and  I  teach  submission, 
renunciation,  abnegation,  here  below,  where  there 
can  be  no  true  happiness,  for  the  sake  of  a  blessed 
O 


210         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

eternity.  Shall  I  cleave  to  this  love  which  we  feel 
cannot  innocently  be  ours,  and  preach  those  things 
with  my  lying  tongue,  while  my  life  preaches  re- 
bellion, indulgence,  self-will  ?  Every  breath  I  drew 
would  be  hypocrisy.  What  heart  should  I  have  to 
counsel  or  admonish  others  in  temptation,  when  I 

was  all  rotten  within  myself  1     What " 

"  Ah,  but  only  listen  a  moment !  This  would 
"be  all  well  enough  if  you  were  guilty  of  what 
you  accuse  yourself  of  !  But  don't  you  see  that  in 
this  reasoning,  or  this  raving,  of  yours,  you  have 
violated  the  very  first  principle,  the  very  highest 
principle  of  law?  You  have  held  yourself  guilty 
till  you  were  proven  innocent,  and  you  offer  no 
proof  that  you  are  guilty,  not  the  least  proof  in 
the  world.  You  are  only  afraid  that  you  are  guilty ; 
it  amounts  to  that,  and  it  amounts  to  nothing  more ; 
for  I  hold  that  Faulkner's  crazy  jealousy  forms  no 
manner  of  case  against  you.  I  confess  that  though 
I  may  have  seemed  to  imply  the  contrary,  I  should 
not  feel  it  lawful  for  you  to  marry  his  widow  if  you 
had  ever  allowed  yourself  to  covet  his  wife.  But 
you  never  did ;  the  very  notion  of  such  a  thing  fills 
you  with  such  shame  and  horror  that  you  accuse 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         211 

yourself  of  it.  I  know  that  kind  of  infernal  juggle 
of  the  morbid  conscience ;  but  I  thank  Heaven  I 
have  my  own  conscience  in  such  good  training  now 
that  it  accuses  me  of  nothing  I  haven't  done :  it  finds 
it  has  quite  enough  to  do  in  dealing  with  the  facts ; 
I  don't  supply  it  with  any  fancies  !  It  ought  to  be 
on  your  conscience  not  to  leave  that  noble  and 
beautiful  creature  to  be  the  prey  of  doubts  and  fears, 
of  if s  and  ans,  that  will  blast  her  whole  life  with  the 
shame  of  a  thief  who  has  given  up  his  booty  to 
escape  punishment !  Suppose  you  look  at  that  side 
of  it !  You  say  you  left  her  because  she  bade  you, 
but  she  bade  you  only  because  she  knew  you  believed 
you  ought  to  go  ;  and  now  you  must  go  back  to  her 
not  only  for  her  sake  and  for  your  sake,  but  in  the 
interest  of  human  enlightenment,  from  the  duty  every 
educated  man  has  to  resist  the  powers  of  darkness 
that  work  upon  our  nerves  through  the  superstitions 
of  the  childhood  of  the  world.  You  not  only  ought 
not  to  let  Faulkner's  dream  have  any  deterrent  in- 
fluence with  you,  but  as  you  saw  yourself,  exactly 
and  entirely  because  of  his  dream,  you  ought  to  act 
in  defiance  of  it,  if  you  have  the  good  conscience 
which  you  've  said  nothing  yet  to  prove  you  haven't." 


212  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

I  saw  that  I  had  touched  some  points  that  had 
escaped  him;  we  talked  a  long  time,  and  at  last  I 
pulled  out  my  watch  in  a  scare,  lest  I  had  overstayed 
my  time.  I  jumped  to  my  feet.  "  Good  heavens  ! 
I  Ve  lost  my  train  ! " 

Nevil  looked  at  his  watch.  "  You  have  Eastern 
time ;  there 's  nearly  a  whole  hour  yet.  I  '11  go  to 
the  station  with  you." 

I  would  not  sit  down  again.  "  Suppose,  then,  we 
let  the  driver  take  my  bag,  and  we  walk  ?  We  can 
talk  better." 

"  You  are  very  good,"  he  said ;  "  I  should  like 
that." 

The  night  was  dark,  and  we  had  the  seclusion  of 
a  room  for  our  talk  as  we  walked  along  together, 
and  in  the  vast  depot,  starred  with  its  gas  jets  far 
overhead,  there  was  an  unbroken  sense  of  com- 
munion. Long  before  we  parted  Nevil  had  con- 
sented to  revise  his  own  conclusions,  and  so  far  to 
take  my  view  of  the  situation,  as  at  least  to  see 
Hermia  again,  and  lay  it  before  her. 

My  spirits  rose  with  my  success,  and  I  set  myself 
to  cheer  the  melancholy  in  which  he  assented  to  my 
urgence.  I  understood  afterward  that  he  was  yield- 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         213 

ing  to  reason  against  that  perverse  and  curious 
apparatus  which  we  call  the  conscience :  and  I  per- 
ceived that  he  was  loath  to  have  me  leave  him,  as  if 
he  were  afraid  to  be  left  alone,  or  wished  to  be  still 
farther  convinced.  He  followed  me  into  the  sleep- 
ing-car, and  there  he  fell  into  the  hands  of  that  rich 
and  cordial  parishioner  of  his  whom  I  remembered 
meeting  when  I  went  down  to  the  steamer  at  East 
Boston  to  see  Nevil  off  for  Europe.  The  gentleman 
recalled  himself  to  my  recollection,  and  rejoiced  that 
we  were  to  be  fellow-travellers  as  far  as  Albany. 

Nevil  could  not  hide  his  disappointment  and  vexa- 
tion from  me,  though  his  parishioner  did  not  see  it. 
He  made  us  both  light  cigars  with  him  in  the  smok- 
ing-room, and  he  talked  us  silent. 

The  car  began  to  move,  and  I  said,  "  Well,  good- 
bye," and  followed  Nevil  out  upon  the  platform  for  a 
last  word.  "  Remember  your  promise  !  Better  get 
off!" 

"  Oh,  I  sha'n't  forget  that.  If  I  live,  I  will  see  her 
again,  and  tell  her  all  you  have  said.  And  I  thank 

you — thank  you "  Clinging  to  my  hand,  he 

pressed  it  hard,  and  stepped  backward  from  the  car 
to  the  ground.  I  saw  him  look  up  at  me  and  then 


214         THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

he  gave  a  wild  cry,  and  I  could  feel  the  car  grinding 
him  up  against  the  stone  jamb  of  the  archway 
through  which  the  train  was  passing.  There  was  a 
hideous  crashing  sound  from  his  body,  and  I  jumped 
at  the  bell  rope.  The  train  stopped ;  Nevil  stood 
upright,  with  his  face  turned  toward  the  light,  and 
a  strange  effect  of  patience  in  his  attitude.  When 
the  train  slowly  backed  and  set  him  free,  he  dropped 
forward  a  crushed  and  lifeless  lump. 


IX. 


HERMIA  died  a  year  later,  and  was  buried  by 
Faulkner's  side ;  his  mother  lived  on  for  several 
years. 

It  was  inevitable,  of  course,  that  Hermia  should 
accept  Nevil's  death  as  a  judgment ;  we  become  so 
bewildered  before  the  mere  meaninglessness  of  events 
at  times,  that  it  is  a  relief  to  believe  in  a  cruel  and 
unjust  providence  rather  than  in  none  at  all.  What 
is  probably  true  is  that  she  sank  under  the  strain  of 
experiences  that  wrung  the  finest  and  most  sensitive 
principles  of  her  being,  or,  as  we  say,  died  of  a 
broken  heart. 

My  wife  and  I  have  often  talked  of  her  and  Nevil, 
and  have  tried  to  see  some  way  for  them  out  of  the 
shadow  of  Faulkner's  dream  into  a  sunny  and  happy 
life.  As  they  are  both  dead,  we  have  dealt  with 
them  as  arbitrarily  as  with  the  personages  in  a 
fiction,  and  have  placed  and  replaced  them  at  our 


216        THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

pleasure  in  the  game,  which  they  played  so  disas- 
trously, so  that  we  could  bring  it  to  a  fortunate 
close  for  them.  We  have  always  denied,  in  the 
interest  of  common-sense  and  common  justice,  any 
controlling  effect  to  the  dream  itself,  except  through 
their  own  morbid  conscientiousness,  their  exagger- 
ated sensibility.  We  know  people,  plenty  of  them, 
who  would  have  been  no  more  restrained  from 
each  other  by  it  than  by  a  cobweb  across  their 
path  :  Hermias  who  would  never  have  told  their 
Nevils  of  it ;  Nevils  who,  if  they  had  known  it, 
would  have  charged  their  Hermias  on  their  love  to 
spurn  and  trample  upon  it.  That  evil  dream  had 
power  upon  the  hapless  pair  who  succumbed  to  it 
only  because  they  were  so  wholly  guiltless  of  the 
evil  imputed  to  them. 

Our  Nevil's  death,  violent  and  purely  accidental 
as  it  was,  seemed  to  us  a  most  vague  and  incon- 
clusive catastrophe,  and  no  true  solution  of  the  pro- 
blem. Yet  our  Hermia  being  what  she  was,  and 
Nevil  being  Nevil,  we  saw  that  it  was  impossible 
Faulkner's  dream  should  not  have  always  had  power 
upon  them ;  and  the  time  came  when  we  could  re- 
gard their  death  without  regret.  I  myself  think 


THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM.         217 

that  if  Nevil  had  seen  Hermia  again,  as  he  promised 
me,  it  would  have  been  only  to  renew  in  her  and  in 
himself  their  strength  for  renunciation  ;  and  I  have 
sometimes  imagined  a  sort  of  dramatic  friendship 
taking  the  place  of  their  love,  and  uniting  their  lives 
in  good  works,  or  something  of  that  kind.  But  I 
have  not  been  satisfied  with  this  conception ;  it  is 
too  like  what  I  have  found  carried  out  in  some  very 
romantic  novels ;  and  my  wife  has  always  insisted 
that  if  they  had  met  again,  they  would  have  married 
and  been  unhappy.  She  insists  that  they  could  not 
have  kept  their  self-respect  and  their  perfect  honour 
for  each  other  if  they  had  married.  But  this  again 
seems  abominably  unfair  :  that  they  should  suffer  so 
for  no  wrong ;  unless,  indeed,  all  suffering  is  to  some 
end  unknown  to  the  sufferer  or  the  witnesses,  and 
no  anguish  is  wasted,  as  that  friend  of  Nevil's  be- 
lieved. We  must  come  to  some  such  conclusion,  or 
else  we  must  go  back  to  a  cruder  theory,  and  say 
that  they  were  all  three  destined  to  undergo  what 
they  underwent,  and  that  what  happened  to  them 
was  not  retribution,  not  penalty  in  any  wise,  since 
no  wrong  had  been  done,  but  simply  fate. 

Of  course  there  is  always  the  human  possibility 


218        THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM. 

that  the  dream  was  a  divination  of  facts ;  that 
Hermia  and  Nevil  were  really  in  love  while  Faulk- 
ner lived,  and  were  untrue  to  him  in  their  hearts, 
which  are  the  fountains  of  potential  good  and 
evil ;  but  knowing  them  to  be  what  they  were, 
we  have  never  admitted  this  hypothesis  for  a 
moment.  For  any  one  to  do  so,  my  wife  says, 
would  be  to  confess  himself  worse  than  Faulkner 
dreamed  them  to  be.  She  does  not  permit  it  to  be 
said,  or  even  suggested,  that  our  feelings  are  not  at 
our  bidding,  and  that  there  is  no  sin  where  there 
has  been  no  sinning. 


THE  END. 


BY  W.  D.  HOWELLS. 

A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES.     A  Novel.     12mo,  Cloth, 

2  vols.,  $2  00.     Illustrated.     8vo,  Paper,  75  cents. 

Never,  certainly,  has  Mr.  Howells  written  more  brilliantly,  more 
clearly,  more  firmly,  or  more  attractively  than  in  this  instance.—^.  Y. 
Tribune. 

This  new  novel  is  distinguished  by  the  possession  in  an  unusual  de- 
gree of  all  the  familiar  qualities  of  Mr.  Howells's  style.  The  humor  of 
it,  particularly,  is  abuudaut  and  delightful. — Philadelphia  Press. 

ANNIE  KILBURN.     A  Novel.     12mo,  Cloth,  $1  50. 

Mr.  Howells  has  certainly  never  given  us  in  one  novel  so  many  por- 
traits of  intrinsic  interest.  Annie  Kilburn  herself  is  a  masterpiece  of 
quietly  veracious  art — the  art  which  depends  for  its  effect  on  unswerv- 
ing fi  'elity  to  the  truth  of  nature.  ...  It  certainly  seems  to  us  the 
very  bost  book  that  Mr.  Howells  has  written. — Spectator,  London. 

APRIL  HOPES.     A  Novel.     12mo,  Cloth,  $1  50. 

Mr.  Howells  never  wrote  a  more  bewitching  book.  It  is  useless  to 
deny  the  rarity  and  worth  of  the  skill  that  can  report  so  perfectly  and 
with  such  exquisite  humor  all  the  fugacious  and  manifold  emotions  of 
the  modern  maiden  and  her  lover.—  Philadelphia  Press. 

THE    MOUSE- TRAP,  AND   OTHER  FARCES.     Illustrated. 
12mo,  Cloth,  $1  00. 

There  is  nothing  at  all  like  them  iu  English,  and  while  the  French 
sometimes  do  something  of  the  sort,  Mr.  Howells  holds  his  own  even 
with  his  Gallic  rivals,  and  has  made  a  field  distinctively  his  own.  The 
charming  volume  has  in  it  elements  of  perpetual  delight,  for  somehow 
one  never  tires  of  reading  these  delicious  absurdities.—  Boston  Beacon. 

MODERN"  ITALIAN  POETS.     Essays   and  Versions.     With 

Portraits.     12mo,  Half  Cloth,  $2  00. 

We  venture  to'  say  that  no  acute  and  penetrating  critic  surpasses 
Mr.  Howells  in  true  insight,  in  polished  irony,  in  effective  and  yet 
graceful  treatment  of  his  theme,  in  that  light  and  indescribable  touch 
that  lifts  you  over  a  whole  sea  of  froth  and  foam,  and  fixes  your  eye, 
not  on  the  froth  and  foam,  but  on  the  solid  objects,  the  true  heart  and 
soul  of  the  theme.— Critic,  N.  Y. 


PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK. 

JKg"  The  above  works  will  be  sent  by  mail,  postage  prepaid,  to  any  part 
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BY  CHAELES  DUDLEY  WAKKER. 

A  LITTLE  JOURNEY  IN  THE  WORLD.     A  Novel.     Post 
8vo,  Half  Leather,  $1  50. 

A  powerful  picture  of  that  phase  of  modern  life  in  which  unscrupu- 
lously acquired  capital  is  the  chief  agent.  .  .  .  Mr.  Warner  has  de- 
picted this  phase  of  society  with  real  power,  and  there  are  passages 
in  his  work  which  are  a  nearer  approach  to  Thackeray  than  we  have 
had  from  any  American  author.— Boston  Post. 

The  vigor  and  vividness  of  the  tale  and  its  sustained  interest  are  not 
its  only  or  its  chief  merits.  It  is  a  study  of  American  life  of  to-day, 
possessed  with  shrewd  insight  and  fidelity.— GEORGE  WILLIAM  CUBTIS. 

STUDIES  IN  THE  SOUTH  AND  WEST,  with  Comments  on 
Canada.     Post  8vo,  Half  Leather,  $1  75. 

Sketches  made  from  studies  of  the  country  and  the  people  upon  tho 
ground.  .  .  .  They  are  the  opinions  of  a  man  and  a  scholar  without 
prejudices,  and  only  anxious  to  state  the  facts  as  they  were.  .  .  .  When 
told  in  the  pleasant  and  instructive  way  of  Mr.  Warner  the  studies  are 
as  delightful  as  they  are  instructive. — Chicago  Inter-Ocean. 

Perhaps  the  most  accurate  and  graphic  account  of  these  portions  of 
the  country  that  has  appeared,  taken  all  in  all.  ...  A  book  most 
charming— a  book  that  no  American  can  fail  to  enjoy,  appreciate,  and 
highly  prize. — Boston  Traveller. 

THEIR  PILGRIMAGE.     Richly  Illustrated  by  C.  S.  REINHART. 
Post  8vo,  Half  Leather,  $2  0*0. 

Mr.  Warner's  pen-pictures  of  the  characters  typical  of  each  resort, 
of  the  manner  of  life  followed  at  each,  of  the  humor  and  absurdities 
peculiar  to  Saratoga,  or  Newport,  or  Bar  Harbor,  as  the  case  may  be, 
are  as  good-natured  as  they  are  clever.  The  satire,  when  there  is  any, 
is  of  the  mildest,  and  the  general  tone  is  that  of  one  glad  to  look  on 
the  brightest  side  of  the  cheerful,  pleasure-seeking  world  with  which 
he  mingles.— Christian  Union,  N.  Y. 

Warner  alone  is  good,  humorous,  and  funny ;  but  Warner  and  Rein- 
hart  combined  must  have  the  palm.  .  .  .  Human  nature  is  most  deli- 
ciously  set  off  by  Mr.  Warner's  skilful  pen  and  Mr.  Reinhart's  dexter- 
ous pencil. — Boston  Advertiser. 


PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK. 

®~  TJie  above  works  will  be  sent  by  mail,  postage  prepaid,  to  any  part 
of  the  United  States,  Canada,  or  Mexico,  on  receipt  of  the  price. 


PS 


